The Next Step
by Radaslab
Summary: Detective Elijah Baley had four times dealt with cases involving "off world" issues.  Of the billions on Earth, why was he the only one to deal with "Spacers"?   No true aliens
1. Chapter 1

**For those of the family of Isaac Asimov, I do appologize, but this is a fanfiction and it takes place outside of his books.  
For his fans, this begins after "The Robots of Dawn," immediately afterwards in fact.  
For those who have followed my other stories and alerted them, the first chapters include a summary of that which came before in a manner I hope you can take. While I would encourage you to read "I', Robot", "The Caves of Steel", "The Naked Sun", "The Robots of Dawn" and all of his "Foundation" series as they're all inter-related in the end, I hope it's not necessary to understand this work. This work follows the three named works, although if you check, you'll see they did not follow in sequence to his "Foundation" series. One character featured occassionally in the "Foundation" works (which took place at least 20,000 years later) - a robot named Daneel Olivaw. Another also featured - a human. This is their story...**

Detective, Grade C-7 (Temporary) Elijah Bailey was primarily a homicide detective with the New York City Police Department. He had been with the Department now for over twenty years and a Detective in Grades C-3 through C-5 for most of those years. In many ways, he was an anomaly.

In the massive, domed hives of humanity on Earth in the fifty-fourth Century of the Common Era (C.E.) or thirty-second of the Hyperspacial Era (H.E.), depending which count of years one used on Earth, the nearly nine billion inhabitants of Earth lived in massive cities of ten million or more all of which were enclosed by a series of massive domes. This had nothing to do with the environment "Outside." It was no more and no less hostile than it had been throughout human existence. The development of the Cities (always with a capital "C") had been a recent one, if one considers over nine hundred years recent. It had begun, in part, to prevent economic disruptions that were associated with weather events and certain natural events and had continued because the human population of earth could no longer be sustained with the limited amount of open land. While crops and livestock were still raised on the open lands outside the Cities, they were luxury goods and no humans were involved in their care. All outside activities including mining were done by robots. Humans lives and worked in their domed caves of steel and concrete.

This confinement of humanity created a highly structured, stratified and controlled society. At the top were the senior government officials either of the City governments or the Terrestrial Government. They were stratified based upon their positions of authority from Grades G-1 through G-12.

A corresponding class were the senior executives of industry and business in Grades E-1 through E-12. Below them were the technical classes of highly trained individuals such as scientists, college educators and academics, doctors and the like with their Grades T-1 through T-12. Below them were the "working classes" which included a large variety of occupations. Those in Civil Service, such as Policemen were Grades CC-1 through CC-12. Those in non-technical professions such as lawyers and accountants and a myriad of their support staffs were classified as N-1 through N-12. Service sector jobs such as shop keepers, lower school educators, the community kitchen staffs even entertainers and a host of other jobs were S-1 through S-12. Workers in non-supervisory positions in the factories, power plants, city services, and the vast yeast, fungus and algae farms (micro-culture farms) which provided the bulk of the City's food were classified in Grades W-1 through W-12. Collectively, these grades were known as the "Common Grades" and their identity cares carried a uniform (C) with their level. The truth was there was little distinction between an E-1 and a G-1 except they were higher than any of the others below the other Grades 8. Likewise, there was no distinction between a CC-1, N-1, S-1 or W-1 aside from being almost at the bottom.

The distinction between the classes was one of privileges and access to amenities. For the vast majority of humans on earth there was no such thing as a private bathroom or, as they said at the time a "Personal." They showered, washed and relived themselves in vast Common Personals that could accommodate scores if not hundreds at one time. The vast majority ate their meals in Common Kitchens which could easily accommodate two thousand or more at one sitting. Each person and family had their designated meal hours for their local Kitchens. Meals were typically served in three shifts. Each Kitchen could accommodate a certain number of "guests," but being or bringing in a guest usually was an unpleasant experience as it upset the logistics situation both at that Kitchen and elsewhere. The food included meats, fruits and vegetables of some kind, but never in large amounts. Most of the food were micro-culture substitutes. Access to a real steak, a real complete potato or such was highly restricted. As a C-5 or higher you could acquire such things from time to time provided you were married and had a private kitchen. As a C-4 that was an amenity a family could expect - the private kitchen known as an "in suite". Private Personals were reserved for C-10 and above. The right to take all your meals "in suite" was reserved for Grades C-10 through C-12, T-8 and above and G/E-6 and above.

At the bottom of City strata were the Unclassified. These were the unemployed or the unemployable. They lived in massive barracks and their personal space was limited to their bunk and their locker. The size of bunk and locker was dictated by their familial status as in whether they were married and/or had a child to care for. Single people had the smallest bunks. Married couples or unwed and unemployed mothers had larger bunks and married couple with authorized children had the largest, but families had to share bunks and there was no such thing as privacy. Copulation, consensual or otherwise, was public. One changed their clothes publicly. Arguments were public. There was no access to "luxury" goods of any kind. If you even had a watch, it was best to keep it hidden because crime was most rampant in the Unclassified Sections.

Elijah Bailey's father had been a Nuclear Physicist, Grade T-10 working in a senior supervisory position at one of New York's six nuclear power plants when he was born, but Elijah had no memories of life at that high classification. When he was but a toddler, there was an accident at the plant and his father was blamed. He had been declassified completely so Elijah's earliest memories were of life in the crowded, public barracks. It was the worst thing that could happen to a person with any classification being cast down into the barracks. It was a loss of whatever you had, however little that was and the higher you were, the harder it was for while it was possible to work your way into classification again you truly were starting at the bottom again.

Elijah had been a product of his class as a young child, particularly after his father had died. He was a petty thief, stealing mostly sweets or other bits of food he could devour quickly. He had snuck into Subethric shows, the holographic entertainments. As any classified, he needed a card to do so properly and of course did not had one. On occasion, he stole something more valuable to barter for something else - probably stolen as well. He had seen violence and as a young teen had participated in riots and demonstrations. He had been among the rioters at the Spacer riots when Spacetown closed itself off by a barrier. At the time he didn't care about the politics or anything. It was a chance to yell and throw stuff. One thing he had never done was looting. Deep down he saw that as wrong. Likewise was robbery or any act of violence against a person other than self defense. And the one thing he avoided was the police and any sort of criminal record.

If there was on thing to be said of the City that was positive, it was that there was no such thing as a birthright. Then again, if you were born to someone with a high classification there was no guarantee you would ever come close again one you entered the workforce. Everyone who finished basic education and got any kind of work began as a C-1. Those with degrees began as Grade C-3 provided their job was based upon their degree. Elijah Bailey's mother died in the Unclassified Barracks when he was five most likely from despair. His father died five years later probably from depression and alcohol abuse, a habit he became afflicted with in the Barracks which was hardly uncommon. Elijah was moved to the Orphanage, which was only marginally better. But he excelled in school, well enough to enter college.

Elijah was very intelligent whether he knew it or not. He did well in school and in college, but was not technically inclined. As a young man with an education that might lead to a good classification, he wanted to do something positive: something for his parents, something for the people he had lived with and had known, something for the Unclassified. He decided to become one of those Police Officers he evaded in youth. They tried to protect society from its worst elements. He passed his Civil Service exams with high marks and entered the Police Academy graduating well within the upper half and left rated as a C-3 and as a "Uniformed" Officer. For three years he was a "Beat Cop," one assigned to a section to deal with whatever happened as a first responder in law enforcement and one who did his best to help the Unclassified he came across - the ones who had some hope of redemption in their society. But for whatever reason, being a uniformed officer was not enough. Elijah wanted more and when he had the time in grade, he took the exam for Detective. Passing would not increase his Classification, but a Detective was more involved in solving crimes than he had been. He passed high enough that Homicide took him on immediately. It was during this time he met his wife Jessie.

He found he loved the job. It was challenging and he proved to be good at it even from the beginning. He loved it so much he really could not see a life at a higher rank. He refused to take the exam for Sergeant. His superiors thought this strange as Elijah was certain to pass, but he wanted to be on the ground as it were running an investigation and not supervising from behind a desk. This, naturally, would circumscribe his Classification. As a detective only, he would never rise above Level C-7 or C-8 and even then such advancement was after so many years of service. But even as a lowly C-3, he _was_ leading investigations and within a few years he was leading or supervising "out of Section" investigations. These were not just out of Sections 4 of New York's Homicide Division, these were "out of City." He'd been to Los Angeles, Chicago, Madrid, London, Moscow, Shanghai and other Cities as well as Lead Investigator or and adviser. It didn't get him an early step up in Classification, but he was proud - quietly - of this and his wife was as well.

The Homicide Division within any Section worked in pairs. There was always a Senior Partner - the more experienced one - and the Junior who was learning the ropes and working his or her way up. Assignments within Section came from "the Wheel." If there were eight Senior Partners within the Section, there were eight slots on the wheel. As each case came in, Senior Partners one through eight took them in order. Out of Section assignments were different. These were usually at either the discretion of the Chief of City Homicide or Chief of Police depending upon whether it was within the City or somewhere else. These assignments when they happened were without regard to the in Section Wheel and only applied to the Homicide Detective assigned. In the case ot "Out of Section" or "Out of City" assignments, designation as Senior Detective or any assignment of a partner was up to the respective local Section Chief. Elijah - and many other of his colleagues - was used to this, but that does not mean they liked it. After all, one got used to his "in Section" partnership. "Out of Section" work always seemed to mean forming a new Partnership for that investigation and that one only. It was annoying; but for those assigned - especially those like Elijah who seemed to be favored that way - it was part of the job.

In many ways, Elijah Bailey's life changed with an "Out of Section" assignment a little over three years ago. It was 5329 C.E. or 3151 H.E by whichever count of years you choose. It began with a summons to see "The Boss" or Chief of Police Julius Enderby. Enderby and Elijah had been friends since college although Enderby had been a couple of years ahead. Like Elijah, Enderby had entered the Police Force upon graduation but unlike Elijah he had moved swiftly through the ranks. He was a capable cop, but a much better manager and political type than most cops and had risen to the top on those skills far more than his skills at law enforcement.

The summons came from R. Sammy - a Robot foisted upon the New York City police by the Terrestrial Government and then only upon pressure from the Spacers. It had cost a good and eager young man his job and Classification and so naturally no one liked R. Sammy. Then again, there were few on Earth who liked robots of any kind and to see a human - a real human - lose his job and all classification to a machine, well it was not a way to endear the Earth bound human race to any robots of any kind. But there was a treaty between Earth and the Spacer Worlds which forced such things. No one on Earth liked it, but there were battle fleets out there which Earth could not hope to defeat apparently ready and willing to enforce the situation.

Elijah was assigned to an "Out of Section" murder case. And it was not just any such case. The victim was a Spacer. The Spacer's believed it was and Earther who committed the crime so this case had interstellar repercussions one way or another and, if Earth failed, the damnable Spacer battle fleets might well return. Even Elijah was aware of this and to say he was politically ignorant was probably an accurate statement.

To understand the implications, one must look back upon Interstellar history for a bit. Not long after the dawn of the Hyperspacial Era when mankind learned to cheat the so called speed limit of the Universe and built ships that could travel light years of space in a infinitesimal fraction of a second, Earth began to explore and colonize space beyond its immediate solar system. It's population was then some eight billion and certain climatic forces were threatening (and in some locations causing) famine or worse. Habitable planets were found in these initial explorations. They had water and the right atmosphere to support human life. There was life on them, but nothing more advanced than mosses and such and nothing threatening to humans. Pre-existing life seemed to be necessary as it consumed the toxic or suffocating gasses of methane and carbon dioxide - and others - and in time produced an oxygen/nitrogen atmosphere. Such life needed liquid water, as did human life. But such planets seemed more common than theorists supposed once the scouts went forth and soon talk of colonization went from theory to practice. These colonists would one day become known to Earth as the Spacers.

Even in the earliest days, the colonists were always chosen based upon their health and intelligence. A simple cold at the wrong time could exclude you. An adverse genetic history of cancer or some such would exclude you. Medical Doctors were not in sufficient number to include - except piecemeal - in the colonization so only healthy humans were allowed. Those who qualified and had an "unhealthy" spouse or child had a choice: stay behind or leave them behind forever. It was a cruel policy of the Emigration Department of Earth and may well have contributed to what followed.

But one thing that was included in the emigration were robots. They were all but banned on Earth but accepted as necessary "off World" and had been for a century or more. Each colonization ship had robots - at least one per colonist - to help with the process of making a virgin world viable. Robotasists were among each of the future colonists to tend to the Robots and one day to train their successors in the design and construction of new robots. Few ships left without at least one robot expert aboard.

Over the centuries something changed in the colonies. True, there was trade between them and Earth but it was far more in favor of Earth than the colonies and worse, from the colonies point of view, Earth continued to off load its "diseased" masses in their direction. In 3267 C.E. or 1089 H.E., the Colonies joined together and launched the First Interstellar War - which they won. Earth's battle fleet was no match for the fleets from the Colonies, especially the older ones. The war lasted only three years before Earth was forced to sue for peace. The battles had all been in space. No planet was invaded or bombarded. Earth lost. Their colonies demanded an end to emigration to their worlds and got it. Earth decided to focus all but entirely on new worlds. They too would be colonized in time but they too rebelled in the end.

In 4358 C.E. or 2180 H.E. the Second Interstellar War erupted, mostly for the same reasons as the first. The "Thirty" old Colonies sided against Earth with the "Fifteen" new ones and launched a massive attack. On Earth, a billion or more died in their surprise orbital bombardment. It was another factor in the eventual formation of Cities on Earth. They had lost again to the "Spacers." For all intents and purposes, the treaty they signed kept them out of interstellar space. Earth was allowed a total of five hyperspace capable ships for research purposes only. All interstellar trade would be done on Spacer ships. It was humiliating and yet they had no choice short of total eradication. They were now dominated by the Spacers. If the Spacers wanted something, Earth bowed its head and submitted. But it was not nearly that simple. The government of Earth would bow - and often be ousted for doing so - the people of Earth would not. Earth could not truly stand against the Spacers, but neither would they as a planet submit.

This had been the case for centuries before Elijah was born. It was the case not long after when the Spacers insisted on opening embassies and trade delegations with every City. It was the case when the Spacers insisted upon forcing the Earthers to accept robots into their Cities. Each robot meant at least two people would be declassified and they, their spouses and children, sentenced without cause to the barracks. The Spacers did not care and the Terrestrial Government lacked the means to stop it - only to slow it. Thus, the anti-Spacer riots. It was in these riots, the many that occurred, that as a youth one Elijah Bailey was a participant.

If Elijah Bailey was anything, he was apolitical. He hated that game which was why he would never truly advance far in the Department or in law enforcement on a global scale despite his talents. And yet…

Julius Enderby had called him into the office by one of those damnable robots not less. Elijah's college friend, the Commissioner of Police, then gave him an Out of Section assignment. A Spacer in New York's Spacetown had been murdered of all things and he - Elijah Bailey - was to be lead investigator. His junior partner would be a Spacer - or so Julius said. Truth was, it was Daneel Olivaw. He looked human unless you truly knew otherwise. Daneel Olivaw was a robot and a highly advanced Spacer one at that. At the time, R. (for robot) Daneel Olivaw was to have been an infiltrator, Elijah later learned. He was to enter the City and study it. But the murder of one Dr. Sartan ended that plan before it could be carried out. Instead, R. Daneel Olivaw became the Junior Partner assigned by the Spacers to the investigation into the murder of one of their own with Elijah as the Senior.

It took him and his new robot partner a few days to solve the case during which they uncovered the Medievalist Movement. Even Elijah knew there were those who sought to "go back to the soil," but he didn't expect a movement of - well subversives - who were in any way organized nor did he expect his own wife Jessie was one even if she only attended meetings. But the real shock was the true murderer of Dr. Sarton of Aurora. It was his own boss Julius Enderbry. It wasn't an intentional killing of another human being but the attempted destruction of a human looking robot - Daneel. But Julius was seriously nearsighted and as a Medievalist wore highly archaic glasses rather than opt for optical reconstruction. He apparently dropped his glasses and blasted the Auroran and not the target robot. Involuntary Manslaughter is what the report would say and he would plead to a lesser offense and simply be forced to retire at a C-4 rating. The Spacers were happy with the resolution and for reasons that Elijah did not totally understand, they to the adulation of most on Earth removed their various legations forthwith aside from their small embassy at the Capitol of the Terrestrial Government and a few seriously downsized trade delegations. One man, not billions, had done what countless generations had failed to do. That man was Elijah Bailey, but fate kept it quiet for now - not that Elijah minded for a moment.

A year or so later, Elijah got another "Out of Section" assignment. This time it did not come from any official in the City of New York, but from the Terrestrial Department of Justice. This time it was not an assignment to another City on Earth, but another world altogether. There was a murder - or at least a non-natural death - on some planet called Solaria. He was partnered again with the human-form robot Daneel Olivaw of another planet Aurora. His assignment from Earth was to do his job and solve the case one way or another. But he was also assigned duties as a spy of sorts. It had been almost a thousand years since anyone from Earth had been to any Spacer planet and Earth was clearly interested in whatever it could learn from this unique assignment.

Solarians were, in the end, human. But as a culture and society they and Earth were so far apart they'd see each other as alien civilizations. Earth had nearly nine billion crowded into its cavernous cities of steel. Each person's personal space, even amongst the highest classifications, was defined in square meters and such. Solaria had but 20,000 or so registered adults and about half were "married." Their personal space was measured in the hundreds of square kilometers or much more. They were not Solarians, in Elijah's opinion, but bred as Solitarians. As a culture, they grew to loath not just personal contact with others but even the physical personal presence of any other. They lived in estates that would easily rival anything man had ever in his decadence had devised. Then again, they were each and every one of them supported by an army of robots - at least 20,000 for every adult human on the planet. Most feared true human interaction by their early adult years. And as Elijah learned, Spacers lived for three hundred Earth years and more. His edge in the investigation was to impose his physical presence on these isolated Spacers.

They had it right to begin with. The murderer - or murderess in this case - was the only one who could have done the deed. She was the young and assigned wife of the victim. A crime of passion if there ever was one for she bludgeoned the man to death for … well, for being so Solarian, near as Elijah could tell. But the murder was not the real crime. The real crime would shock the entire human race throughout the human galaxy. The murderess would leave Solaria un-charged and un-convicted because of what Elijah found in a mere three days on that alien world. The murder had been set up. Not staged, but set up by another. The victim had been close to uncovering a vile plot against all humanity. His true killer took advantage of the victim's young and - for a Solarian - overly romantic and overly passionate wife and gave her the means to do the deed. The true killer - who twice tried to kill Elijah (by proxy) in the ensuing days - wanted a universe to himself almost. He was designing robotic controlled weapons of mass destruction that could wipe out planets and despite the positronic prohibition against causing harm or allowing harm to humans of any sort would do so anyway. It sent shockwaves through the Spacer worlds and the unraveling of the case made one Elijah Bailey of Earth an intergalactic hero almost overnight.

But being the Galactic hero meant nothing to Elijah. He was a homicide detective plain and simple. That was it. But what worked in the back of his mind was a short conversation he had with one Dr. Han Fatlolfe. The man had been a colleague of the murdered Dr. Sarton of Aurora in Elijah's first interstellar investigation. The interview - aside from eliminating a suspect - put the so called bug in his brain. The human race was committing a form of suicide. The Spacer Worlds in their way and Earth through its Cities in another. There was no expansion into the Galaxy and there had been no such thing in hundreds of years and even then it was limited. Every planet in the Human Galactic hegemony had breeding quotas and such (enforced at various degrees) to keep humans down. They needed to expand to survive as a species. The Spacers - who by no could expect to live three hundred earth years or more - were ill equipped to see to the survival of the race. It was the short lived and fast breeding humans of Earth who were best suited. Spacetown and the attempt at forcing robots into the Cities of Earth was an attempt to get Earth moving once again in that direction. Elijah came to believe this fully after Solaria and started what one day would be called the Outsiders.

It began with just his son teenaged son Bently. The two of them on Elijah's days off would do what no Earther would willing do. They'd leave the comfort and familiarity of their domed city and explore the Outside. Two soon became twenty - mostly teenagers looking for a new adventure. There were soon much older ones - life long Medievalists who had long espoused a return "to the soil" who joined them and their children and grandchildren with them. And that expanded quickly into hundreds and even thousands. Not one of them actually lived outside truly. But they ventured out to learn about it and experience it and a year or so later to learn how to live in it even if they all returned to the City at dusk.

Elijah remembered a conversation he had with his son on a nice day outside under the shade of an oak tree.

"If we could colonize the Galaxy again, Dad, who would go?"

"There're millions who would given the chance," Elijah thought aloud. "Millions. Even if it would be only one in ten who lived, there are millions who'd take that chance. Millions of unclassified, millions who cannot for whatever reason increase their classification; millions who would take that risk, Ben. It's what we have over the Spacers if we can ever use it."

"The Spacers will never allow that," Ben said.

"Not now," Elijah agreed with his son, "not today. Time can only tell. What little I know of them is this: they are not the future. Only we can be, son. Only we can be if they let us."

"Will they, Dad?"

"No idea. One day I hope so. I hope this for you and if not for you for your children and grandchildren. I hope for a world somewhere without classification and the risk of losing it all. I hope for one where you are what you are 'cause you should be and all that. Not just one world. Many. Thousands in the end and maybe more than that…"

Then came his second summons into space. Elijah was forty-six. He was young by the standards of Spacers who had conditioned themselves and their worlds such that three hundred plus was an expected life expectancy. For Earth, he was easily middle aged, easily halfway between birth and expected death by old age if nothing else. Each of his prior two Spacers case assignments were indeed murder investigations on the surface but each had their own intergalactic political implications. Elijah was never the politician and never saw himself as one which was in large part why he knew he'd never get any kind of G rating. He'd be a C-class for life and this didn't bother him. Being sent off world - again - did.

The Spacers, or at least certain ones, had requested him. Earth, once again, agreed provided he played the spy again. It was not Elijah's idea of any kind of good deal. The only good news is he was again partnered with the human-form robot Daneel. Despite his general aversion to artificial intelligence, he had come to see Daneel as a friend. This was their fourth partnership. After Solaria, there had been a third occasion. It was now known as the Mirror Image Case. Two Spacer mathematicians were implicated in the murder of a third. The two suspects were identical twins. One did it, the other could not have. But which one? Their ship was held while the matter of the investigation was left to Elijah and Daneel. There was plenty of DNA evidence, the problem being that identical twins were identical down to their DNA. In a few days, Elijah solved this case as well and again added to his fame as an investigator - at least in the Spacer worlds.

This most recent case called him again into space to a strange world for the second time in his life. The Mirror Image Case had been conducted on Earth - or at least the investigation had been. Elijah had been "off world" to Solaria and that was it until now. This time, it was off to Aurora. It was the largest (by human population) and most powerful of the Spacer worlds and again Earth expected a report about them in the end. He was to investigate the "murder" of a robot. As far as Earth was concerned, he knew this was irrelevant. No Earther had been to Aurora in almost a thousand Earth Years. The Terrestrial Government was less concerned about the investigation than what he might learn about Aurora. But it had been made clear. There was serious pressure on Earth about this and if he failed in this "murder" investigation… things might well go bad for Earth and for him.

Fortunately, it seemed, the investigation had gone well at least from the standpoint of those on Aurora who had requested his assistance. Still, none of this Spacer stuff made sense to Elijah from his standpoint, that of a homicide detective. For his entire professional career his goal was to catch the perpetrators and see them brought to justice. Naturally this meant he needed to know who had done the deed, he preferred to know why it had been done and he needed evidence to prove that the doer had done it, sufficient evidence to sustain a conviction because the bottom line in law enforcement was obvious: enforce the law. In all four of his dealings with Spacers, they seemed less interested in obtaining justice for the crime than the why of the crime itself. It was this thought that he worked over on the twelve day trip back to Earth.

He spent his time aboard the interstellar transport cooped up in his cabin. His only social contact was with the human form robot Daneel. The Spacers barely tolerated him he knew because he was from Earth. This was not an across the board prejudice. There were clear exceptions in each case. Still, where it did raise its head it was clear that the Spacers who held onto their prejudice looked down upon Earth and its billions as a lesser form of intelligent life. The even less polite view was to view them as modern day lepers who should wear bells and walk about warning everyone they encountered that they were unclean. It seemed the space ships he had been on held the latter view as at no time in any of his space travels had he been allowed out of his cabin. He found this insulting on his trip to and from Solaria. On his trip to Aurora, he was less concerned for the lack of distractions and interruptions allowed him to study book films on Aurora and its history. And on this return trip, it was allowing him time to prepare lengthy reports. If the ship's crew and its passengers (assuming there were any other passengers as there was no longer a Spacetown on Earth) if they did not want to socialize with the diseased Earther, this time it was fine with Elijah.

Having Daneel present during this trip back home was useful. On his return trip from Solaria aside from preparing a standard report of his investigation he had done little or nothing. This time, once the standard report to his boss was complete he intended to prepare at least two others, much more in depth and longer reports. One would be about Aurora. He had only been there for a little over three days, but he had observed and learned quite a lot about that world and culture. He would never truly consider himself an expert on that world, at least not by Spacer standards. But by Earth standards he was and reluctantly knew he was. He had been there. He had moved through that world - or at least the small portion of it necessary for his investigation - with relative ease and spoken with Aurorans from different walks of life, even if the majority of his contacts were with robotisists. The second and potentially longer report was on Spacers in general. This would be based upon his time off Earth on both Aurora and Solaria as well as his two Spacer investigation that occurred on Earth - the murder of Dr. Sarton in Spacetown three years ago and the "Mirror Image" case aboard and Auroran interstellar transport. In all four instances, the robot Daneel had been his partner and as a robot had absolute and objective recall of what he had witnessed. These later two reports he would not share with Daneel, even though he intended to rely on Daneel for recall for those interviews he had been a part of. These reports also would not be presented to the New York City authorities. They were for the Terrestrial Government alone and what the "Terries" did with the reports was their own business.

Daneel had been assigned to Elijah by the Spacers because he looked human. In fact, unless you both were aware he was a robot and very observant, you could not tell the difference at all. Daneel breathed, blinked and physically behaved as if human. He could eat and drink if it was necessary to preserve the illusion, although he could not digest the food. His human persona was so close to perfect that even robotisists and Spacers intimately familiar with robots could not tell his true nature just by looking. But he was a robot. Intellectually, he understood notions of human emotion, but he lacked the capacity to truly emulate emotional responses. His intellect was purely logical and governed by the three laws of robotics:

_First Law: A robot may not harm a human being nor through inaction allow a human being to come to harm._

_Second Law: A robot must obey any order given by a human being unless such order conflicts with the First Law._

_Third Law: A robot must preserve its own existence unless doing so conflicts with the First or Second Law._

A clear violation of the laws would permanently damage the robot's positronic brain and, perhaps, destroy it completely. Naturally it was not that simple. Maybe in the earliest days it was, but over the millennia the positronic brain had become extremely complicated and subtle. What might appear as a violation of one of the laws to a layman was not necessarily a violation that could damage a modern robot at all. If A was greater than B, then B did not violate the laws. If, for example, the potential harm to A was greater than the potential harm to B, then harming B to prevent A was within the realm of acceptable compliance and the objective difference in degree between A and B could be so slight as to be practically an infinitesimal degree. In the case of Daneel, when his programming was modified so that he could become Elijah's partner, Elijah became the ultimate A. But where harm to Elijah was not a factor in the computations, Daneel like any robot would default to the basic programming.

This specific programming had not been a significant factor in the Spacetown Investigation nor had it been one on Aurora. True, on Aurora Elijah and others were concerned about elements that might wish to harm the Earther so Daneel and the other robot Giskard were as much body guards as they were assistants. But it had been a factor on Solaria. Elijah was a New York City cop. You did not conduct any investigation from behind a desk or by remote control. You went to the seen of the crime. You gathered evidence. You personally interviewed witnesses and persons of interest. You personally took risks with your own safety to catch the perpetrator and see to it that justice could be served. Solaria was very, very different from Earth.

In his over forty years of life prior to his first trip to a Spacer world, Elijah had never been "Outside." The cities of earth were fully enclosed. Light was artificial. The climate was constant and mild. There was little difference between the inside of your quarters or anywhere else in terms of temperature - except in the micro-culture farms and industrial plants where a temperature difference was unavoidable. There was no rain, no sky above your head. There was no wind. While all Earthers had experienced something akin to winds and breezes, these were always a product of their movement through the air rather than the air's random movements against them. Life in such an enclosed, controlled environment invariably led to a sense of agoraphobia in one degree or another. On Solaria, he learned it was something that could be overcome; that at least for him it was not a pathological condition. Upon his return he began venturing out of the City into the open country during his days off - never far, never more than a couple of miles from an access, but still it was exposure to the open. Joined by his teenaged son Bently at first and more young people later - who saw it as an adventure - Elijah realized that the agorophobia he had experienced was due to decades of conditioning and not an ingrained part of Earther psychology or genetics. The young people, while initially startled by the open and by changes in whether, adapted very, very quickly and learned to deal with it in weeks or even less.

Elijah knew Daneel was unique for a robot. He was one of two human form robots ever made for certain and both by the same robotisist Dr. Han Fostolfe of Aurora. The other was named Jander and was the "vicitm" whose "murder" had brought Elijah to Aurora. He now regretted not asking why Jander had been constructed. It now seemed to him that was somehow important considering he knew why Daneel had been made. For those who assumed sinister motives about Spacers, which meant for most of the almost nine billions inhabitants of Earth, Daneel could be called an "infiltration" robot. He could, if his nature was not known, enter the Cities of Earth and do whatever the Spacers wanted (subject to the Three Laws of his positronic mind, of course). His real original intent was less sinister. He was, for lack of a better word, a probe. He was intended to learn about Earth, its people and culture through observation and interaction and no more. Consequently, he was designed with substantial human psychological subroutines to aid in his observations. These would not in and of themselves make him more human, but would help in his analysis of Earth. It also affected his interpretation of the First Law.

From his initial programming, Daneel also knew what the Spacers knew of Earthers. He knew they never ventured outside and - as did the Spacers themselves - suspected there was a psychological prohibition at work. Because he had the psychological protocols as part of his primary programming, Daneel had an expanded concept of the First Law. The billions of other robots in the galaxy saw harm as a physical thing. But Daneel understood there was also a psychological aspect. To knowingly cause psychological harm to a human or through inaction allow such harm to occur would also engage the strictures of the First Law. As near as Elijah could see, psychological harm and its attendant risks were a lower class of harm than physical, but they were still a part of the equation. Thus, allowing Elijah to expose himself to the true outside, without greater risk of not doing so, would violate the First Law. Elijah was willing to take this risk if it would further the investigation. Daneel was not absent proof that the risk was acceptable but his robot nature would not allow for experimentation thus he prevented Elijah from attempting such experimentation no matter how well reasoned Elijah's arguments to the contrary had been.

Elijah's safety was the "A" in the simple equation, an "A" that trumped all "B's" His Earther inclination towards agoraphobia - one which Daneel had witnessed personally less than an hour after their arrival on Solaria - triggered his "A" response. There was, however, a powerful "B" for a psychologically aware robot, one which could trump "A" if "A" was even moderately suppressed and that was the Solarians themselves. If "B" was greater than "A" even by the tiniest amount, preventing "B" was the robots adherence to the First Law. Daneel knew this as well. Elijah knew that Daneel knew this. Even if Elijah could convince that he could - for a time - function without physical or psychological harm outside the walls of the specially built mansion he had been assigned, the Solarian "B" would mean (and did) that Daneel would prevent Elijah from leaving the estate. In varying degrees, the vast majority of Solarians were so conditioned (as Earthers were in their conditioned fear of the outside) such that they suffered from degrees of Anthropophobia - a fear of humans in the physical sense. Elijah's investigative plan required he physically inspect relevant places and physically meeting with persons of interest in the investigation and, as such physical (as opposed to meetings by holographic projections) might cause psychological harm to the Solarians in question themselves, robot Daneel would be obliged by his programming to prevent this as well.

Criminal law was all about intent and more specifically a concept known as "specific intent." There were exceptions, but they were few and for a homicide detective there were almost no legal instances of a strict liability killing - one where intent was never a factor. Intent defined the crime. "Homicide" was the killing of another human - any such killing fell into this definition. It was the intent of the perpetrator that defined it as a criminal and its degree of criminal culpability. To kill a person to save your life or that of another was a homicide, but if that was truly the case it was a justifiable one for which there was no criminal repercussions. To kill a person by accident was also a homicide, and whether it resulted in criminal responsibility came down to intent. If you intended the even which led to death but not any potential harm that followed and could not reasonably anticipate such harm, there was no crime. But, even if you intended no harm but could or should have anticipated its possibility, it was. "Murder" required an intent to kill a person, even if it was not the person who died.

Elijah was not a psychologist nor a sociologist nor, for that matter a robotisist. He had taken at least introductory course in all three in college but that was it. But he was a cop and a homicide detective and over years he certainly had an on the job indoctrination into the first two disciplines and could intuitively deal at a rudimentary level with the third to a degree. He took advantage of the Second Law and ordered Daneel to reveal his true nature to three of the robots of the estate built for him. They were to detain him until ordered otherwise. Elijah's knowledge of the sophistication of the positronic brain was admittedly limited for it only took Daneel an hour or so to escape, but that hour was all that was needed. Until the end of that day's escapades, an end which might very well have ended in Elijah's death in a shallow pool when the intense and increasing sense of agoraphobia finally overwhelmed him, Daneel was always a step behind.

As an Earther and by that very nature, Elijah despised robots on principal. They had been banned from Earth since the earliest days. They were deemed, for whatever reason, a threat. They were, after all, artificial intelligence. The Three Laws aside, who could say where that intelligence would take the robots. Who would truly be the slaves and who would truly be the masters? The Spacers accepted robots and relied upon them and had done so since they first set forth into the galaxy. The Earthers never had. The Spacers accepted that the three laws were a guarantee against a robot dominated realm and the Earthers never had. Solaria began to teach Elijah the truth and his trip to Aurora confirmed it…


	2. Chapter 2

The Robot Daneel had been sent from his cabin as Elijah was not about to let certain aspects of his reports ever get back to Aurora or the Spacers. He turned on his voice transcriber and continued.

_I regret to be of the opinion that Earth's future is bleak. We live on the razor's edge between what we accept now and total destruction by our own hands. What happens if something went wrong in any one of our Cities? How many thousands or millions would die as a result of what may have been a minor dislocation of services a few hundred years ago? Can the other Cities take up the strain in resources? Would they at the expense of their own citizens? Would the affected City stand idly by and allow itself to be ignored in its day of crisis? Would they accept that condemnation of perhaps millions and if not how would they react?_

_The answer, as I see it, is not positive. Thousands if not millions would eventually flock to the other Cities, straining their resources to the breaking point and even if the other Cities were willing to allow it, one City's collapse would in time create a cascading effect. The Medievalists want to return to the ways of thousands of years ago when we all lived outside and drew all of our sustenance from that environment. Can we do that today? Can we dismantle our Cities and truly return? Can we do this without millions if not billions of dead? We cannot. We crossed that line some time ago. To "go back to the land" as some Medievalists advocate is not possible without billions dying of starvation and such for their cause. We are stuck on this Razor's Edge between what we do have and massive if not total suicide for us. How many of us can truly survive outside our Cities? And even if we could say millions and millions, how many would be left alive and able to live once the City nuclear plants went through the inevitable meltdowns? _

_We, of Earth, are all prisoners of our own Cities. We try and control the growth of population, but there are steps we refuse to take - and I do not advocate taking them. Genetic euthanasia may be the practice on Spacer worlds - it is on the ones I've visited - but I do not suggest this solution nor do I suggest the mandatory sterilization of those who violate breeding protocols as Spacers do. But our imprisonment in our Caves of Steel is - in the long run - our death sentence. We must get out! We must be able to expand! We must or we will one day all die. We who are alive today might not see this fate, but our descendants surely will at one point. The future of Earth - its prolonged future is not here on Earth, but in the vast expanses of the Galaxy! We must expand or surely we shall perish! Regrettably, while most of our billions are ignorant of this (as I was), it is not a surprise to many and especially those in the right places in government. We do our best for all, hoping the problem will not arise during our lifetimes but all the while knowing if we don't find a solution before it's too late, it is left to our children and maybe, by then, it will be too late for Earth._

_But for a thousand years and more we could not and cannot move off into the Galaxy. The Spacers prevented this with their treaties and battle fleets to back them up. If we remain confined to our solar system, we will perish in time. But how can we leave when we're forbidden from doing so under pain of swift and certain orbital bombardment? This conundrum has held us back, kept us isolated, kept us compliant for generations too many to count. Perhaps it's not our fate to forward mankind. Perhaps we are a dead end. But to believe that one must believe that the Spacers are the future._

_They are not._

_Some of them know this._

_We are the future! But to understand that, one must first understand Spacers._

_We are prisoners: prisoners of our Cities and of the Spacer control of interstellar space. Spacers are slaves! Just about each and every one of us of Earth understand we are imprisoned on our world. Very, very few Spacers understand that they are as much imprisoned and maybe more so than we are. How many robots are there one Earth? A few million or hundred million at best? This is against some nearly nine billion humans? How many of those billions have ever seen a robot? I dare say most have not. Those artificial intelligent things exist outside our cities in the open spaces. _And they all are replaceable! We don't need them to maintain our standard of living, just some millions willing to step outside, live outside and tend the fields and livestock, fish the seas and harvest the forests for our micor-culture farms. _I dare to suggest that given a choice between Unclassification or a life of low Classification, we could find the necessary numbers for the farms, mines and forests and be done with the robots - but that is not the answer._

_As I said, we of Earth are imprisoned. We can't change this. Right now, all we can hope to do is free a handful to life at labor outside our prison. The Spacers, however, are enslaved to the culture they accepted from the start. Given the chance, we of Earth can find those who would leave our world behind - millions upon millions even today. Given the chance, they can't except by the comparative scores or less. Our poison which threatens to condemn us is our enforced isolation both on Earth and in the galaxy. Their's are their robot minders._

_I concede I do not know the precise numbers. There are, last I recall, well over eight point five billion humans on Earth and we represent more than two thirds of the entire human population of the Galaxy with the other third spread out on some fifty Spacer worlds. Aurora is the oldest and largest in terms of human population and inhabitance. It was the first colony. It has around two hundred million people and twenty robots per person. Assuming that is at one extreme - as far as robot to human ratio is concerned - and Solaria the newest human world is at the other with some 20,000 humans and 20,000 robots per human, a simple extrapolation of the average shows us there are more robots in the galaxy than humans by an order of magnitude if not more. A conservative estimate would be around one hundred billion of the things. And yet, 99.99998 percent of those or more are not and have never been on Earth! If anything, they are more prisoners of their robots than we are of our Cities._

_What do I mean by this?_

_I have, after all, only been to and observed to Spacer worlds out of fifty. But given those two, I can assume the others are somewhere in between._

_AURORA:_

_Human population: approximately two hundred million based upon their sources._

_Robot to Human ratio: 20:1 - although five to one in personal servant robots is closer to the average per person. Every human has at least one robot and probably two. They never leave home without one in attendance. I met a Hairdresser and Haberdasher, a sole proprietor at the lower end of their economic scale who had three personal robots for his residence and personal escort. I have no idea if he had others for his business, although it would not have surprised me if he did. One must understand that their industry and agriculture is all robot labor so the 20:1 ration includes their entire manual labor force._

_SOLARIA:_

_Human population: around 20,000._

_Robot to human ratio: 20,000:1. The humans live in isolation such that in any congested part of the planet it is hundreds of kilometers from your residence to your own property line, much less to the nearest human being. Allowed a spouse for procreative purposes, the estates are such that without a scheduled appointment to copulate, the two might never meet inadvertently._

_Neither society can exist without robots. Take away the robots, Solaria dies within weeks and Aurora in months or less. In that regard, they are more susceptible to failure of their robotic system than we are to our City system. But aside from a small handful of them, they see no weakness._

_Aside from the fact we are all human, do our societies have ANY similarities? Indeed we do, but for different reasons and to different degrees. We practice population control here on Earth. We have to. Resources are limited and to allow freedom to breed at will as it were would stretch those resources to and beyond the breaking point within a generation. But as extreme as our measures may be, they pale compared to the Spacers and their fifty worlds of resources. We take our measures to stave off famine. They take theirs to maintain their higher (much higher) standard of living. Would we terminate a pregnancy simply because it was unauthorized? Do we? No, we do not. The child's parents are punished with classification downgrades or declassification. Even in the worst case, the child has health care, they are fed as any of us are, and they have access to education in a society where anyone can rise from the depths of the Unclassified. On both Aurora and Solaria, assuming such a thing were even possible, the child would be terminated. Even if a child were authorized, should it prove genetically unacceptable to their standards, it is also terminated. Should it prove in excess of population quotas for it's generation, it is subject to termination. This has nothing to do with their real access to resources and everything to do with their desire to maintain their abnormally high - by human historical standards - standard of living. It is exacerbated by the fact that their life expectancy exceeds ours by four times our average and it did not cross my mind to ask for how long in their 300 and more years of life a Spacer woman remained fertile. The only one I met in my travels who was slated to breed was younger than me in real terms by a decade in our years. I cannot say that their women can breed any longer in real years than ours. Perhaps they can, but even then I have no idea for how much longer. Still, and given our limitations in resources, why is it we value the unwanted or imperfect child and they would terminate it without hesitation?_

_In part, it's because we raise our children and they don't. On Solaria, the child is surgically removed as an embryo not long after the pregnancy is confirmed and incubated in what to me looked like some kind of vat. There, the embryo and fetus are tested an monitored for "undesirable" traits and if found terminated. This monitoring continues until they become full adults and failure to measure up means death. It is said to be painless and merciful, but the notion is sickening._

_Aurora's not as harsh, but by our standards of population control, it's unacceptable. Unauthorized children are terminated without prejudice. Auroran mothers carry their child to term, but such children will be euthanized if found genetically unacceptable. On both planets, children are not raised by their birth parents. To do so on Solaria would require the parents to become physically involved with another human, something most of them develop a pathological fear of doing more so than we of Earth develop with regard to the Outside. On Aurora, it's just not done. Raising children is probably a distraction for them. Spacer children are raised by robots for the most part. They are raised, for lack of a better term, on children farms!_

_On both Spacer worlds, each in and of itself at the opposite socially of the other, marriage is all about procreation and not about long term partnership. Solaria, this is the case because procreation must still occur by sexual union but it is the rare Solarian who would ever think or even enjoy such physical proximity to another human. It is merely viewed as a necessary and yet totally undesirable fact of their life one thankfully discarded forever once their biological quota has been met. It is as asexual and un-sexual a world as there ever could be and if they ever develop viable technology to keep human physical interactions entirely out of the process of procreation, they will do it and implement it._

_On Aurora, marriage is by consent of the parties and not by genetic determinations as on Solaria. Children, however, are determined by genetic examinations. But socially, Aurorans are the Anti-Solarians. They marry only for the right to breed and add a child to the farms. Even then, polygamy is not anathema to them for either sex and sexual fidelity is considered a form of social perversion. Dancing for us Earthers is more of a meaningful relationship than having sex is for Aurorans. Consensual sex is acceptable for any Auroran over the age of ten of our years. Sexually speaking, there is no social exclusivity in marriage. There is no social stigma to having sex with anyone (or it seems anything) outside of marriage. Sex is freely offered and freely given, but always by mutual consent. Legal relationships have no meaning. Adultery as we know it does not exist there. Marriages are for procreation rights only and once the right is over, they often break up. Even during such time, they are free and it is accepted to engage in sexual activity with anyone else. I cannot say how they prevent unanticipated conceptions with their extra-marital liaisons. Marriage is for convenience and children for the most part. Once the child is born, that marriage ends it seems. After all, it's not like they have to raise the child as that is done on the farms by robots._

_For those who wish to write of interstellar romance, by and large the Spacer worlds are already dead that way. Either because the sexual aspect is abhorrent as on Solaria, or far too open, sex has lost its allure and with it the romance that leads to it and to a long term and exclusive relationship with another. To say this is dead entirely is inaccurate, but one must look to the extreme minority who prove the rule as it were. In my experience, there were two. Each were younger than me in real terms and very young by Spacer terms. Each were defying or wanted to defy their own culture's norms about sex and romantic love. One was Gladia of Solaria and despite what the damnable and obviously intergalactic subethric drama which damned too many see as the truth, there was no romance between us. She would have accepted that - a romance that is. She would have gone so far as to move to Earth for that and without our immunities to even the most mild of infections, she would have died of the common cold within a year. She wanted romance and that was why she was in the situation she was in on Solaria, it was why she could be manipulated into killing the "proper" Solarian husband - which she did. Her world of Solaria despite its comfort and luxury was dead to her. But she was the exception on that world and maybe the only one. From my perspective, despite killing her husband in a fit of rage of which she has no memory, she is the only redeemable thing from that world. She moved to Aurora, sexually speaking and socially at the opposite end of the perspective and found that as sterile a place in its own way as Solaria._

_Enter Santirix Gremoinis, an Auroran and artist by our definition, if one considers hair styling and clothing design art. Gladia was an Artist on Solaria, although we on earth would have (and I did) difficulty appreciating her very, very abstract style. On Aurora, where she relocated, she adjusted to a culture that found her style … unappealing and when into her own form of fashion design. So she and Santirix had this in common. And socially, Santirix was as far removed from the "free sex" culture of Aurora as Gladia was of the "No Intimacy" culture of Solaria. They each wanted the true, long term relationship each knowing that long term for a Spacer was measured in hundreds of our years. He courted her, for lack of a better word. She accepted his friendship and company, but not his Auroran style offers of intimacy. I never really learned what they were, just hints here and there, but it seems to have been as sterile as saying "wanna take a piss?" I told Gladia to be more open to his advances as Auroran as they were and Santirix to be less Auroran in his approach and deep down, I do wish it works for them both. If some jackass intends another drama from my recent off-world experience, please portray me as the matchmaker and not the love interest … rant done._

_Gladia and Santirx are brought up because they, more than any other Spacer I've ever met, prove that Spacers are or can indeed be human by our definition. But this is a side bar as the lawyers say. What is the point?_

_I was chosen to investigate the murder of Dr. Sarton of Aurora by the then Commissioner of the New York City Police Department. I have a heavy suspicion as to why. As we now know, he blasted the Spacer to oblivion and covered his tracks with an Earth robot R. Sammy. Mistaken identity, it was. His target was the human form Robot Daneel who looked very much like Dr. Sartan of Aurora and even more so to an uncorrected, nearsighted eye without corrective lenses. I was the Commissioner's friend and still am to this day. I was a safe bet to cover his mistake - or so he thought at the time. But why the later investigations?_

_I'd like to think I'm a good and capable cop. But to be so singled out by the Spacers? Why? Am I truly the best in the world? Am I truly the best in the Galaxy? I doubt that. I do my job and that's all I do! And yet, three times after the Sarton case the Spacers called on me - on me specifically again. Why? Don't they have their own police? (In their robot dominated society I think it's safe to say not really). But why me? Why me? Why me? Each and every time I was called into what I see as the Spacer realm, be it here on Earth or off planet, I asked myself that question and found no answer … until now, I think._

_Let's deal first with my first Spacer case. Dr. Sarton of Aurora was found blown apart in the meeting room of Spacetown just on the edge of New York and, therefore if the Spacers agreed, within its jurisdiction. It was an Out of Section assignment for me from the Chief of Police himself. The Spacers suspected an Earther attack. But they turned the investigation over to a lowly Plainclothesman Detective. They could've just declared it an Earther attack and have been done with it, couldn't they. We'd be subjected to sanctions, forced to pay an indemnity or face their battle fleet and there's not a damned thing we could do to prevent it and yet they insisted on a joint investigation - I know, I've later checked. My being called in was a matter of a degree of happenstance. My boss was the killer and we'd been friends since college. I guess he assumed I'd cover his ass. I'm not and have never been that sort of cop. Not with a body blasted at point blank range._

_I don't need a forensics team to prove that bit. Couldn't have used one even if I needed one. Damned evidence at the crime scene, remains included, were gone when I arrived. Nothing but the damned Spacer holographic projections of the crime scene to go on and of course, if they had holography of the crime itself, they sure as hell didn't share it. What I did see made the manner of death obvious - it was a Blaster at very close range. Poor bastard literally exploded when his internals heated up in sufficient volume (range dependant) in that fraction of a second. His head, arms and lower torso and legs were intact, but the rest was nothing more than an exploded goo. Don't need a forensic tech to tell me the shot was from less than a meter away from its point of impact. Don't need a forensics type to tell me why the shooter wasn't dripping in goo either as any who know about blasters know the pop of overheating, if it breaks the skin, always is away from the point of impact of the beam. Spacers had accounted for all of their blasters and none had been fired, but there was no murder weapon at the crime scene or anywhere nearby and no clear suspect aside from - from their obvious point of view - and Earther._

_But how? Did you ever, ever try to get through Spacer security? They prodded you and probed you and if you were even allowed to carry a blaster, you had to leave it behind. You were made biologically if not sexually sterile, just to get into Spacetown. How the hell could you bring in a blaster?_

_The obvious answer was that it was already there and this was not far from the truth. Still, that answer leads to the obvious conclusion that the perpetrator had to be a resident of Spacetown and yet they - or at least the one true Spacer I spoke with during the course of that investigation, the robotisist and victim's colleague Dr. Han Fostolfe of Aurora - insisted it could only have been done by an Earthman. I might have been willing to concede that there may be millions of Earthmen (and women) in New York alone with motive for the Spacers were forcing their robots upon us at the cost of jobs and Classifications. Any one of those condemned to declassification would have motive and the many more living in fear of declassification likewise would be motivated to take some action however desperate to rid New York of the robots and their source. But means and opportunity were seriously lacking. It was not as if we Earthmen could come and go as we please even without any weapons. Access even to the security screening in Spacetown was restricted to a select few in government and industry on official business and by appointment only and if Spacetown had more than such visitor a day, it was a particularly busy day for them. On the day in question there was only one scheduled visitor: Julius Endbury, Commission of the New York City Police Department. So the question remained, how did a blaster get there, what happened to it and who did the deed._

_Dr. Fastolfe suggested a possibility which I initially dismissed as ludicrous. The good Doctor suggested that the Earthman perpetrator physically left the city with the weapon, crossed open ground, entered Spacetown by one of their unguarded and unmonitored exits to the Outside, mudered Dr. Sarton and returned the way he came. I felt there were so many holes in this theory it had to be a joke and if so in poor taste. _

_First of all, there is the blaster itself. I concede that at the time I knew less about Spacers and their culture than I did about robots and I knew next to nothing about robots beyond the introductory course in Robotics I received in college over twenty years earlier. For all I knew, Spacers had ready access to blasters on their worlds. This is not the case as they are as heavily restricted and regulated there as they are on Earth but I could not know that at the time. As you are aware, on Earth blasters are both highly restricted and highly regulated and limited to law enforcement personnel only. In New York, this means authorized personnel of the New York City Police Department, the Port Authority Police Department, the Terrestrial Bureau of Investigations and Terrestrial Security forces. If there is one thing that will surely get these various agencies working together as one it would be a missing blaster. There were no such missing blasters at the time._

_Second, there's the question of egress. I will admit my ignorance at the time for I had no idea - assuming the highly improbable scenario proposed - if it was even possible for any human to leave the city in such a manner. It was. There are well over a hundred such egress points around the city for the purpose of allowing for the transport of food and raw materials from Outside. Each of these portals is guarded by an officer from Port Authority, not to prevent their use but to inspect incoming cargo for vermin. They certainly would have noted a human entering or leaving the City but I concede I never bothered to check. The closest such egress to Spacetown was about seven kilometers away. Dr. Fastolfe suggested the perpetrator walked for a ground vehicle would probably have been noticed if not before and certainly after the fact. A person on foot would have been dismissed - at least at a distance - as just another robot tending to the fields outside. Plausible to a point, unless one includes Earth psychology. Even during the Great Barrier Riots almost thirty years ago when hundreds of thousands of angry citizens were attempting to enter Spacetown by force, they did so at the only physical connection and entryway between New York and Spacetown. Despite the rage and mob mentality, not one person left the City to approach Spacetown across open ground. As Earthmen, we are conditioned to not even consider Outside as a part of the world and, based upon my own personal experiences later, over time we become agorophobic such that psychologically the Outside can rapidly overwhelm us. Naturally, I considered this scenario as probable as the victim's demise being the result of a spontaneous explosion of internal gasses - possible in theory however unrealistic, but so improbable as to approach the impossible._

_Some time much later after I returned from Solaria and after I started my "Crackpot" group that does go outside of the City to "dig in the dirt," purely as an exercise of intellectual curiosity and in my spare time when conditions Outside prevented useful dirt digging, I reexamined my suppositions from that case based upon what I had since learned. Is it possible that an Earthman could conceivably have crossed that open ground? Yes, provided he had conditioned himself to being Outside. Our agoropohbia is not an innate part of our being. We are not born with it. It builds over time as a result of the conditioning imposed upon us by the environment we live in. And since it is a learned behavior or psychology and provided it has not reached the level of a true pathology or overwhelming neurosis, it can be unlearned in time with reconditioning. From my experience with the "Crackpot Dirt Diggers," it suffices to say that such conditioning, while peculiar to each individual, is a function of age. Young children require little or no such "baby steps" to the Outside. They step out of the dome without hesitation and are enraptured as opposed to discomfited with their first such excursion. To them, it seems, it's akin to being given the coolest toy ever made. The older the person, the greater the reluctance and apprehension, but again such things diminish with exposure. Thus it is at least outwardly conceivable that someone might have conditioned themselves such that the Spacers' theory as to how the assailant did the deed rose to a level of the plausible._

_But that does not take into account environmental factors outside. It might not be as simple as walking seven kilometers in a straight line from the City egress to Spacetown. Terrain, something we don't contend with in the Cities, can turn a seven kilometer straight line into a much, much longer and potentially impossible walk, conditioned to the Outside or not. There may be hills, large rises in the ground that one must either climb or go around. There may be rivers and streams - flowing channels of water on the ground that may bar that approach entirely. Rivers may be impossible to cross without conveyance or the ability to swim and even then, the cold of the water or other factors may well make it suicidal to even try. I have not personally walked that route so I can't say what natural obstructions there may or may not be, but unless the ground were both flat and open, the approach would be longer to at least some degree. Then there is the question of weather._

_It is an archaic term here on Earth. We can live our entire lives without any true concern for what the word means. In our day to day lives, its affects are barely noticeable at all. Weather is the conditions in the natural atmosphere. The air temperature within our Cities is maintained at a constant. What that constant is depends upon where you are. Enter the micro-culture farms and the air temperature will vary from field space to field space depending upon the culture in production. The metal mills and power plant working floors are much warmer than the rest of the City, but unless you work in or visit those places, you will not experience a change in air temperature. The same cannot be said for the outside. Air temperature can and does change from day to day, hour to hour and even minute to minute and it can swing markedly at times from warm to very cold and cold to very hot. There is no wind in the Cities. We experience something akin to it on the moving walkways, the expressways and if we happen to be near a major ventilator, but these movements of air against us are predictable. Not so outside. The air moves of its own accord and might not move at all or be moving with such force as to knock you over if you fail to brace yourself or get off balance as you walk._

_And the one thing we do not experience in the Cities (outside of a shower) is precipitation. Outside under the right conditions water falls from the sky of its own accord. How much, how long, how warm or how cold varies all the time with each storm or event. It is almost always colder than our coldest shower settings and, of course, we can neither turn it off nor change the settings. If it is cold enough Outside (and there are times during the year when it is - a period known as Winter in the archaic) water freezes. If it falls from the sky, it falls in ice crystals. They are so light, you wouldn't even notice them upon impact, but you will see them as flakes of white falling gently to the ground. It's actually quite pretty, but always quite cold as it must be for water to become ice in any form. This period of cold lasts for months, but it's not constantly cold. At the polar opposite months of the year is what was once called Summer - a period of very warm and often hot air. In between is Spring as cold warms to hot and Autumn as hot cools to cold. The weather varies during all of these times._

_We may not experience "the Seasons" in the Cities, but we notice its effects if you think about it. Certain outside foods appear in our Section Kitchens at certain times of the year and not others or, if they do at others, they are not fresh but canned or frozen and we all can tell the difference. Long term weather event will affect quantity. There are some years when strawberries - for example - seem common and others where they seem few and far between. Weather affects how much grows outside and how much can be brought into the Cities at any given time. Prior to my "Crackpot Dirt Digging" I never really noticed this phenomenon. My wife, a Kitchen Dietician by trade, did but not the reasons for it. My own experiences with weather Outside factored into my intellectual re-investigation. I never would have considered it relevant at the time, but it might well have been critical._

_Recall, the Spacer theory was that an Earthman with a Blaster crossed seven kilometers of open ground, gained access to their enclave, blasted the victim, and returned the way he had came. Assuming the terrain was not any issue (again, that is something I did not check - my "Dirt Digging" is from a totally different location), what was the weather like? Bad weather might make what may have been plausible implausible and even impossible. Could I find out? Actually, I could._

_While the vast majority of us in the Cities can live our lives without any concern for what the natural weather is like on any given day, there are those who are concerned. There are those at Universities who study such things. But there are those whose interest is not merely a matter of academic curiosity, but of practical concern. The New York City, North American Region and Terrestrial Departments of Transportation have people whose sole job is to be concerned with such things. Weather events affect the supply of raw materials either in production or in delivery, so such events are studied and monitored to reduce any possible economic dislocation. A bad season for growing, and production in the micor-culture farms is increased to compensate. A good season and we see more natural food stuffs in our Section Kitchens than before. They keep meticulous and even hourly records of what is happening outside the domes of our Cities and these records are public ones - not that the vast majority of us care. They had records of the local conditions on the day of the murder of Dr. Sarton._

_It was mid-winter. There had been a blizzard - and extreme winter storm typified by extreme cold (ten degrees below freezing or worse), high winds (which makes it even colder) and lots of snow. Snow, in those conditions, remains on the ground or is blown again into the air. Its depth is not uniform, for it piles in mounds if there is anything to block the wind even for a moment. You don't walk on snow, you walk through it. Your feet sink into it until it is compressed to withstand your weight. For these piles - called drifts in the archaic - you either wade through them or have to move around them. But while the snow would slow you, it is the cold that will kill you. We Crackpot Dirt Diggers have fortunately not learned that the hard way. When it turned cold, those more adventurous ones acquired the Freezer Gear from the meat cutter lockers - surplus of course. Still, that would have been inadequate on that day. The assailant would have been lucky not to freeze to death on his trek to the target - assuming he knew how to get in which was another bit that bothered me during the original investigation. What was the probability that and Earthman first knew that the barrier was not the only access to Space town (aside from its own Spaceport) and second knew where one was? Not very likely. For most of the investigation at the time I assumed I was chasing the proverbial red herring for it had to be a Spacer! _

_Logically, that was the only conclusion. Murder requires three things: specific intent often called motive, opportunity and means. The means was a blaster, obviously. But there was no way a blaster could come through their security at the barrier. Their damnable robots would have put and end to that. Motive? As stated before there were easily thousands if not millions in the City with some degree of that. Opportunity? The crossing of open ground by a citizen was discarded from the moment of suggestion. But I had never, until the end, considered the possibility of a robot bringing in the weapon for the assailant._

_The rest is a matter of record. Something had crossed that open ground in the midst of a frigid blizzard - a robot. It was a device the Spacers would never suspect and one which was immune to such things while both we and the Spacers are not. It was not the killer, merely the carrier of the instrument of death - a police blaster. It was R. Sammy, assigned to that precinct by treaty and order of the Terries. R. Sammy was deactivated by a radioactive Alpha Sprayer on orders of a human not days later - the Third Law being overridden by the Second. On the day in question, R. Sammy and the blaster were destined for the only Earthman with authorized access to Spacetown at the time, Julius Endbury the Chief of Police. His target was not the Spacer he blew to bits, but a robot - R. Daneel Olivaw, a robot who looks so human it's uncanny and more critically, could be mistaken for the true victim. "And God made man in his own image," and ancient work says and so the victim who fashioned the robot's external appearance did the same. Julius was also near sighted and chose glasses over reconstructive surgery. They had broken before the target arrived. To Julius, who was otherwise familiar with both Dr. Sarton and R. Daneel Olivaw, he might well have been able to tell one from the other with his glasses, but not without. Dr. Sarton died in a case of mistaken identity._

_But why? From the standpoint of Julius Endbury, he was doing his duty for Earth and circumstances made it such he made a grave mistake. Julius knew of the purpose of R. Daneel. R. Daneel was not built to be my partner in any investigation, but as a form of infiltration unit. The Spacers wanted to learn about us and our culture but could not - short of suicide - do more than meet us under very controlled conditions. As I said, even the common cold would and could kill them so to physically enter our Cities and society meant death. They also were all too aware of our aversion to robots. They wanted an observer, one who could blend in with the crowd as it were and gather information. A robot - an obvious one - would not serve the purpose. Their probe - for lack of a better word - had to be able to interact with us without that psychological barrier in the way. They had been up front with Julius about this, although not the "why" of it, and he saw it his duty to deal with the infiltrator before it became lost in the masses of our City. He assumed, as most Earthmen would (myself included), nothing but sinister motives on the part of the Spacers._

_The events that followed argue that this was not the case. My recent meeting with Dr. Fastolfe (where I was a guest in his house the entire time and he proved to be quite forthright) shows me it was never the case. What happened after? An Earthman (albeit in a case of mistaken identity) had confessed to the killing of a Spacer and not just any Earthman, but a City Commissioner of Police! And what did the Spacers do? Aside from the ancient treaty Trade Delegation and Embassy outside of Washington, they were off planet as a whole faster than you can say 'Jehoshaphat!'. While R. Sammy has been replaced within my Precinct, robot integration into the cities has come to a standstill. What had happened? Why had Earth even been asked for help in this investigation? After all, the Spacers never needed proof of any kind before to come down hard on us! Dead Spacer by blaster - it was an Earthman - Sanctions and more trade concessions! Truth? Irrelevant. The death of Dr. Sarton by our hands or not and with or without our knowledge would be all the pretext they need! And yet…_

_And yet we were ASKED to investigate, rather than to run an investigation in the hopes that we could prove their pretext wrong and when that investigation PROVED it was an Earthman, they pulled out! No new sanctions, nothing! Why? It was a question that bothered me then, but such intergalactic things are way above my Classification level and certainly outside of my job. Still… Why were we, us diseased and dirty Eathers (in many of their opinions) allowed into this at all? And why, when even we had to concede it was an Earthman who did the deed (mistakenly or not) did they just brush it off and leave? Until very recently, I had no answer…_


	3. Chapter 3

_At the conclusion of the Dr. Sarton investigation I returned to my job. Due to the potential political ramifactions and arguably because Earth was under at least some pressure from the Spacers to resolve the matter - whether such pressure was real or imagined or both - the Sarton case had been a top priority, but it was hardly the only investigation I was involved in at the time and that work did not go away simply because I was off investigating the death of an Auroran robotisist. As far as I could tell, the only Earthman who truly did not treat it as just another murder investigation was my former boss but seeing as he was the shooter, that is hardly unsurprising. He quietly retired and I went back to cases arising from domestic disputes, employment issues and other more mundane motivations that can drive people to violence. I would like to think there's a positive notation in my personnel file for the Sarton Case, but such a notation would probably be to the extent of the alacrity of its resolution and little more. _

_It was about this time that my wife went back to work as a Dietician with the local Section Kitchen. This was her decision. She had been working part time for a number of years while our son Bently was in school, but Bently was nearing the end of his secondary education so she felt he was old enough that she did not need to be home for him. She was and is a C-3 and combined with my C-5 and the fact that she was again employed full time, we did enjoy minor upgrades in allowable amenities. This had everything to do with her employment and nothing to do with the Sarton Case. I am acutely aware of how things work. As a Plainclothesman Grade Detective, the highest Classification I can expect is C-7 and I was fifteen years away from that possibility. I am certain that were I to try, I could easily pass the Examination for Sergeant or Inspector which would include a step up in Classification upon promotion and a higher potential Classification upon retirement. But it would also place me in increasingly administrative roles which, maybe one day, would be alright, but I like what I do and so long as that is the case, I am content as a Detective. I have more than a handful of former Junior Partners who are now higher up in the Force than I am and this does not bother me at all. _

_For the better part of the fifteen years prior to my involvement in the Sarton Case and since, I have had numerous "Out of Section" assignments. My first was soon after I was named as a Lead Detective and it was, in fact, my last assignment as a Junior Partner on a case. Since then, my Out-of-Section work has been as an advisor or lead Detective. Consequently, I have worked cases throughout New York City and with several other Cities throughout the world as well as multi-jurisdictional cases with other Cities and with the Bureau of Investigations. I know of Detectives who consider any "Out of Section" assignment as an inconvenience since such assignments are always with the understanding that the case in question takes priority over their "In Section" assignments, but those cases must move forward as well. I consider them a challenge and, consequently, I have had my pick of Junior Partners over the year because I expect them to move our cases forward when an "Out-of-Section" assignment prevents me from doing so myself. It seems clear from my occasional chats with higher ups that they are certain I could run a Squad Room or even a Section Division if only I'd sit for the relevant exams and maybe one day I shall, but I like the job._

_About a year after the Sarton case, I was called to a meeting in Washington D.C. at the Department of Justice. Of course, no one told me what the meeting was for but I did not find it unusual. While I had never been called to Justice before, as I said I have worked closely with the Bureau on many cases. They've even tried to recruit me on more than one occasion and my refusal is more for reasons of family than anything else. My wife cannot envision a situation acceptable to her that would require us to move away from New York. Deep down, I suspected that this trip was another attempt at recruitment - one which I would listen to, give consideration, discuss with my wife and politely decline. It was not._

_I met with Undersecretary Albert Minnim who promptly informed me that I was to be temporarily reassigned Out of Section. This was unusual. The procedure, as I understand it, is the request is made by the Section, Department or Agency seeking outside assistance. The decision to assign a Detective is then made by the Inspector or Deputy Inspector of the relevant Homicide Section, the Deputy Chief of City Homicide or the Chief of Police and the Detective is so advised by them personally. I am not aware and it is not my experience that the decision and assignment are made entirely by the other Agency. Then again, I never worked with Justice before and they are the global law enforcement Agency. Even the Bureau and Terrestrial Security work for them. I was advised that while the posting was "Temporary," it would be of indeterminate duration, I had to move to the location and my family could not accompany me. It also carried with it a permanent Classification upgrade "without regard to Seniority" to C-6. Even at that moment, I supposed that was for the inconvenience. But I also knew this meant I could potentially retire as a C-8 and not a C-7 even if I continued to refuse to take any promotion exams. I wondered what kind of assignment could justify such an upgrade?_

_As we all know, that than damnable intergalactic drama has shown, the assignment was not just Out of Section, it was out of this world entirely. There had been a murder on some planet called Solaria. The Spacers had requested me. Objectively goodness knows why. I don't consider myself that much better than any other Homicide detective on this planet with my years of experience. But they - or at least one of them - had dealt with me before so I suppose I was a known quantity. And, at the time, I doubt there were few if any on Earth who realized how influential Dr. Fastolfe is in Auroran politics although we suspected that Aurora is very influential in Spacer affairs being the oldest, most populous and most powerful of those worlds. The question I would ask myself later was why would Aurora care about a dead Doctor on Solaria? Why would any Spacer world care? It would be analogous to the Mayor of New York taking an interest in the death of a citizen of Shanghai who in life was unknown outside of his Section. Then again, from what little I've observed of Spacer culture while they are clearly human and despite their three centuries of life and arrogance are not immune from basic human failings, their robot culture makes murder all but impossible. There had never been a murder on a Spacer world, or so I've been told. I tend to doubt that. I will accept that with robots close enough at all times to prevent such acts of violence, it may not have happened within memory. They may have written off Dr. Sarton's death as an Earth thing, part of the risk any Spacer takes coming here. (We all know they are far more concerned with illness than violence, but it would factor into a risk analysis.) But one Spacer killing another? Apparently that was discomforting not just on Solaria and so, within hours of my meeting with Undersecretary Minnim, I found myself on an intergalactic transport with just enough time to call the Wife and explain why I wouldn't be home for supper - or anytime soon. _

_I was surprisingly pleased to find I had been assigned to work with R. Daneel again. I will admit I don't like robots even if one could prove that this one or that one is truly necessary. Here on Earth, they run the Outside growing crops, harvesting trees for the cellulose and sugars to feed our micro-culture farms and mine our resources. Were we to step out of our Cities in even small numbers for our population, they could be replaced entirely. I see them as economically disruptive. Whatever efficiencies gained from their abilities at labor cost humans jobs, classifications and opportunities. Spacers can have them and keep them for all I care. Still, R. Daneel was a known quantity, to the extent I could know or understand any robot. He does not behave (openly) like most robots either on Earth or even on Spacer worlds. Bound as surely by the three laws of robotics common to all positronic brains, his psychological protocols make him seem less the machine - although he certainly does lack any sense of humor or irony. I was relieved that I would be dealing with something somewhat familiar. That and the fact that I would not have to establish a new Partnership relationship._

_Not to burst Earth's bubble as it were, but my experience of space travel was nothing like that damnable subethric drama. There were no fancy dinners at any table, no viewing of the galaxy from the observation deck - for all I know the ships I've been don't even have those amenities. It could be I was the only human aboard. I never met another person (human) either passenger or crew and only a handful of robots aside from R. Daneel and on my last voyage R. Giskard. I was for all intents and purposes confined to my cabin. I guess by Earth standards it was somewhat luxurious. On the ships I had a two room suite, one for sleeping with a nice bed and another for dining (alone), working or viewing book films or conversing (if one considers conversing with a robot as such.) It had a private Personal, which is well above my classification on Earth so I guess it was luxury although I doubt a Spacer would see it as anything but very basic and not something to be tolerated long term. There was no physical way to look out into the vastness of space - no archaic windows onto the universe outside. There is a devise you can use, but it's very disconcerting to do so. In your mind, the walls and everything else disappear and you are alone in space and its inky black vastness. I've tried it a couple of times recently but I don't think I'll ever get used to it._

_Then there is the time. All told between Solaria and Aurora I've spent eight-two earth hours on the surface of those spacer worlds, less than eight days. Assuming no delays in this transit, I will have spent twelve hundred hours just traveling to and from those worlds, fifty three days and some hours to be precise. My off world experiences are almost entirely - time wise - confined to my little cabin on ships. It is not exactly a glowing advertisement for space travel. I understand why, to a point. Spacers see us as diseased beings - not all, mind you as I've met many who do not overtly express such mannerisms in speech or behavior - but it is ingrained to a degree. As for the time, it's not like the dramas. It takes days to get far enough away from local gravitational influences at sub-light speeds to be able to jump through hyperspace accurately and apparently it is not wise to jump too close to a gravitational field, thus further days at sub-light speed to approach your destination. Don't ask me why for it's not like I spoke with anyone knowledgeable about such things and the robots I could speak to are hardly programmed in the scientific nuances of hyperspace theory and navigation assuming I could make any sense of it if they were._

_Solaria. I had never heard of the world before, then again it's not my job. As I previously have written in regards to their robot to human ratio and their apparent cultural psychology, even by Spacer standards they are an aberration. But had they never developed that bizarre culture, from the standpoint of mankind's expansion into space they are both unique and an aberration. _

_Since the invention of the hyperdrive engines over three thousand years ago, we have (at least for a time) expanded into the galaxy. Colonization was driven even then by certain needs from the home world: more raw materials, more food and places to send our growing population. We looked for worlds that were all but ready for us to populate. It needed to have liquid water at the surface, an acceptable range of temperature and "natural" irrigation through rain from the sky at least in places. It needed a nitrogen/oxygen atmosphere of sufficient density and oxygen concentration to support us and our attendant live forms which also meant it need some amount of carbon dioxide as well - high enough to support plant life but not so high as to kill us or our animal life. We learned early on that there were surprisingly many worlds within our stellar neighborhood that possessed the first requirement - liquid water at the surface and a dense enough atmosphere to sustain such water. But the predominantly nitrogen/oxygen atmosphere was less common and always - it seems - a result of indigenous life processes. We have yet to find a potentially habitable planet where free oxygen exits in a natural state without regard to pre-existing life processes. Fortunately, indigenous life on the worlds to date is primitive, rarely more evolved than single cell things and even less commonly evolved to leave their seas to inhabit the land. These planets, with the right aspects of air, temperature and such, we called back then "ready made." The seas might be theirs at first, but the lands barren and only because their life had yet to cross that line. Our life had a billion years ago or so. So we moved out._

_The process has been all but universal on the "ready made" worlds. The initial colonists arrived in the thousands, their primary goals to explore for minerals and become self-sufficient for their own food and for a generation or more, they had no choice but to look to the Home World for support, without which they would starve. As the colony developed, its first exports to the home world was almost always raw materials - mineral ores and such. Soon, as their agriculture developed they would export surplus food stuffs, all the while new colonists would arrive in at least some numbers. In time, while local manufacture to some degree existed from the earliest days, industrialization would begin and they would gradually wean themselves from dependence upon the Home World for manufactured goods and, one day in time, become a net exporter of such goods. Forty-two of the fifty Spacer worlds were colonized directly by Earth. All forty-two in their infancy were dependent upon Earth to survive and later for trade of any sort. Aurora was the first, and as it reached a level of independent advancement, it led the First Intergalactic War against us about the trade issues. There were other worlds almost as advanced who supported them, but many still dependent upon our support and trade. All of them rebelled. We lost. It did not end our colonization efforts, but as a result of the Treaty, interstellar trade was no longer the Road to Earth as it had been. Without the monopoly we had maintained, off world food and resources were traded to our detriment, as we know from our history. We were allowed to continue into space and form new colonies with the proviso that should they ever deem themselves self-sufficient to an acceptable degree to them they would become independent and be able to negotiate trade deals with any other world as they saw fit._

_We colonized close to twenty new worlds during this period - although none of those worlds reached true self sufficiency under our control. The Second Interstellar War in our history books is again based upon Spacer allegations of unacceptable trade practices with their worlds and our newer colonies. We lost that war as well and have since been confined to our lone system. We all know that loss of trade necessitate our retreat into what we now know as Cities. While our trade practices were a factor, according to the Spacer histories I have been allowed to read (and copy) it was not the precipitating cause of that war. In their history (and more graphically in their literature) it was a romance between an Earthman trader and a Spacer girl from an otherwise unremarkable world called Stenis. Stenis was never an Earth Colony, but rather one of seven worlds colonized from Aurora during the period between wars, as the Treaty allowed that to happen. According to Spacer history, the Earthman - while not yet symptomatic - had contracted what for us would be a minor case of the flu, but she had no immunity at all. A third of Stenis died in the outbreak and it would have been more had not the Spacer Authorities quarantined and atomized any whose antibodies even suggested exposure. That is why they've kept us confined! We're under Galactic quarantine!_

_This naturally raises questions. After almost a thousand years, why was I allowed to leave this world? Naturally, I went through a medical regimen each time that is hardly pleasant and to my surprise, most of the Spacers did not fear infection from me - but the undercurrent was there certainly with others. Why would they let any Earthman into their realms?_

_It is a question I leave for now for I have digressed and focused on "normal" colonization to explain why Solaria is different. I will add but this: According to Auroran sources, seven of the fifty Spacer worlds were their colonies at one time and they were settled not out of need for themselves, but out of a brief sense of competition with Earth._

_Solaria is different. Not just because it is what I've already described. It is an anomaly nonetheless. Solaria is the only world in the Settled Galaxy not colonized from either Earth or Aurora and the only one settled since the Second Intergalactic War. I've already given its demographics: a mere 20,000 humans, but its huge robot population made it self-sufficient very early on. It was not settled out of any kind of need for resources (as with the Earth colonies) or need for - I don't know - justification (as with Aurora). It was ready made and settled solely as a luxury (which damned well explains its subsequent development as a society.)_

_It was settled from Nexon. It was the fourth of Earth's original colonies and by the Second Intergalactic War, an economic rival of Aurora, although with perhaps a third of the population. It's elites wanted a getaway destination - some place to holiday and all that. And, six days space travel away, there was Solaria a ready made world as it were. They build estates, getaways from the world they knew. Each such elite did it on their own resources, building their own "perfect" world from nothing. They would spend time there, watching their version of perfection without restrictions rise from the dirt, but for some time and maybe a few of their long lived generations, their luxury retreats were just that. Business and life was still on Nexon. Over time, however, and as their estates on Solaria became productive under robot labor, one by one they left Nexon altogether and closed the door behind them as it were. These were not those looking for the adventure of a new life or escaping the limitations of their culture. They were the top of the tier, those who left not for opportunity but to enjoys the fruits of theirs and their ancestors labors. Solaria is a world founded from and dedicated to luxury and closed off to the rest of the human race. That I was allowed there at all (Earthman or not) was in my opinion an act of desperation of the part of some Solarians._

_But I - Plainsclothesman Elijah Baley - was not requested by the Solarians, was I. It was the Aurorans who made the request for my involvement. I assumed it was six of one and a half dozen of the other at the time. I assumed Aurora speaks for all Spacers. Now, I know that is wrong. They are influential being the largest world in terms of population and economy, but they rule but themselves. Solaria needed a murder investigator and Aurora has none, but knew of one and one they respected for whatever reason. And so, I found myself on a new world._

_It's funny in retrospect. I, the Crackpot Dirt Digger, should first be exposed to "Outside" not on Earth but on an alien world. And it's not like the Solarians or Spacers meant for that. Every accommodation had been made to ensure I'd never see the sun, as it were. A tube of sorts was set up from the spaceship to a ground car such that I'd never leave an enclosed space and the ground car had no windows. But it was, apparently, a convertible and the top could come down and expose its occupants directly to the outside. Daneel made a mistake in telling me this for I was able to order the robot driver to do so. I HAD TO GET USED TO THIS! THIS WAS AN OPEN WORLD! Still, it was … incapacitating at first. The light was brighter than anything I had ever experienced and at speed everything around was a blur of color. Sensory overload, I guess._

_They (the Solarians - or I should say their robots) built an Estate for me! An Estate! If you think my cabin aboard ship with its private Personal was luxury, you should have seen this and I never saw all but a small fraction of it! This wasn't a vacation for me, it was a job and that's where my time was spent. Still, I saw enough. A hundred Class 6 families could live in what I saw as my private quarters if redesigned appropriately. It had the space. Outside, there were what I'd guess you'd call manicured gardens for my enjoyment (saw them briefly and not by means all) just as you might enjoy in the various parks and botanical gardens of the city and what I could see seemed to stretch on forever - although I doubt that was truly the case. I had an army of robots at my beck and call, not that I bothered with that. They were there, however. And these were temporary quarters, built solely for my stay and to be demolished upon my departure. It was the height of decadence in my opinion, but see above - Solaria began as a planet of exclusive luxury._

_Recovering from my first real exposure to any Outside, I set to work and met the Chief of Solarian Security one Agent Hannis Gruer. I didn't realize it at the time. I didn't realize I was viewing him as a holographic, or as they say trimentional transmission nor that such was typical on Solaria for almost all human interactions not related to procreation. It seemed real enough to me. It wasn't until the end when he said "End Viewing" that I knew he was never physically there and goodness knows where he actually was. Even in the course of our conversation, I got the impression that Solarian "Security" was nothing like Earth "Security." He was not law enforcement, his true job was to protect Solarian interests off world. But somehow a murder on world fell within his job description and there he was. I found him officious, but not overly patronizing or condescending towards me the Earthman. He laid out the case as he knew it and was genuinely surprised at my criticisms of its handling in the three weeks or so since the murder. It never crossed his mind that the body and evidence should be protected and preserved so as to facilitate the investigation. They were destroyed and removed by robots in the "Natural" course of those things jobs and no Spacer saw a problem with this._

_This is not the way to ingratiate oneself to a Homicide Detective - unless you want to be a suspect…_

_The victim was one Dr. Rikaine Delmarre, age 175 of our years, middle aged or not quite so for them. He was a Fetologist and I will get to that. He was married to Gladia Delmarre - never learned if she had a maiden name or if any of them do. For all I know - and it would make sense based upon their culture - they are named for their estates. The wife was twenty-eight by our years and apparently the age difference is of no moment in Solarian culture and who am I to judge? According to Dr. Altim Thool, a medical doctor even by Earth standards and the only human who can testify to the scene of the crime, Dr. Delmarre died from a single and brutal blunt force trauma to the back of the head. No murder weapon was found at the scene of the crime. There were potentially two witnesses: one was the suspect, the wife Gladia found unconscious and upon recovery both "hysterical" and with no memory of the event. The other was a robot "conveniently" atomized as it seemed it was unresponsive - it's positronic brain having been destroyed arguably from a violation of the First Law which was not contested by the Spacers._

_I was left with a conundrum. The only person - only human who could have committed the deed was the wife. In the Spacers' view, the mere presence of a robot at the scene made that impossible given that there was no murder weapon. She was the only one, realistically, with access to the victim in the physical sense. But no means was found and motive was unknown. She was neither a large nor physically strong woman. The amount of leverage required to deliver even a lucky fatal blow to the head seemed unlikely (unless Spacers are also thin skulled which, without a body, cannot be determined.) This is not so say it was impossible, but without the murder weapon or the victim's body there was no way to either prove she had done it or disprove it._

_Within less than a day, I learned enough about Solarian society to realize that left to their cultural norms I was stymied. On Earth, I can question any potential material witness whether they wish it or not. Unless they are formally or informally accused charged, they cannot expect protection from their "Right to Counsel" and terminate the interview. The trick in an interview with a person of interest is to avoid any hint of accusation. But until they can or do invoke their rights, they cannot terminate the interview. On Solaria, by convention and custom all such personal interactions are by holographic projections and nothing prevents one party from terminating the projection and barring any attempt at re-connection. Interviewing is an Earth cop trick and for those skilled at it a very effective one. But to work at its full potential, the witness must not feel they can terminate the interview at will. How does one do that on a world where all - or at least most all - human communication is at the discretion of either person? _

_I realized early on. I had to be there in person! You can turn off a holographic communication, but it's a lot harder to turn off a personal presence. You're protected by robots, but they are all bound by the first law not to harm humans or by inaction allow humans to come to harm. That was the double edged sword. It might well work for me IF I could get into the physical presence of the witnesses and such, but it worked against me as well. Daneel, programmed with sophisticated human psychological protocols which were useful in analysis, would also know of the potential psychological harm of my leaving my temporary estate and being exposed to the Outside. The First Law would trump all orders or reason, however logical, and he would prevent that risk of harm. Even if that harm was a non-factor, the Solarians loathed physical presence of another human. Even if my psychological harm was a non-issue, it would be a potential issue for them. Daneel had to be … neutralized … in order for the investigation to move forward. The Second Law says that a robot must obey a human unless doing so violated the First Law. While I could not order Daneel to let me go forth as it were, I could order other robots to detain him and - in perhaps my only feat of robotic psychology brilliance - I ordered Daneel to reveal his true nature to a handful of robots who would detain him. He got free of his captors for my orders were simplistic and he was not, but it gave me enough time to get what I needed for he was steps behind me for hours._

_So much for robots if I with but a basic course in Earth robotics could stymie arguably the most advanced of them all even if for a few hours - see below._

_Unfettered by robot intrusions and protections, the investigation proceeded apace, but not without difficulties. As I said, physical evidence of any kind was lacking. I was left to basic investigative techniques, interviewing people. I needed to know all I could about the victim to determine who his friends, associations and potential enemies might be and any persons of interest - suspects such as his own wife. Naturally, I needed to know who might want the victim to die and why._

_Mrs. Delmarre was the obvious suspect - cooperative as she might have been. She more than any other person had the opportunity - the access to the victim at the time of the crime - to have done it. She was his wife, and murder between spouses is hardly unknown on Earth. It turned out she also had a temper as well, which did not sit well for her innocence. But the why and how continued to bother. Mrs. Delmarre was short for a woman by Earth standards and I suppose Spacer ones as well. She was also petite and lacking in obvious upper body strength. The victim died from a single blow to the back of the head. She would need a heavy object, one too hard to conceal, to have done that for she would need the mass to make up for her lack of physical strength. Moreover, there was the fact that she was almost a half meter shorter to her husband so he had to be sitting for the crime to have occurred at all or she needed a rather long club. But then there was the robot they destroyed conveniently. Why hadn't it interfered assuming Mrs. Delmarre was the assailant? And why would she assault the man to begin with?_

_Why would someone want to kill Dr. Rikaine Delmarre?_

_For all I knew this was all some kind of ruse. The body and potentially any evidence had been conveniently eliminated long before I ever set foot on Solaria. The only person who could have done the deed - according to the Solarians - was not in custody and seemed to have no memory short of finding the body. Assuming she was the killer, this lack of memory is hardly atypical as most killers either have an alibi for the time at issue (false as it may prove) or claim no memory of the event or something similar. Their culture prevented me from making a suspect sweat as it were. I couldn't put her or anyone else into an interrogation room and let them stew. They were free to go about their lives as if nothing untoward had happened at all. It was … disturbing and the reason why I felt personal interviews (as opposed to what they accepted as merely holographic) was necessary._

_The victim was a "Fetologist," not that the profession in question has either any meaning or relevance on Earth. It was important - as it is in any homicide investigation - to understand the victim's professional life to the extent that they had one. Their work might well lead to a reason for their demise, after all. On Solaria, a Fetologist is usually someone picked at some kind of random to do what they consider a dirty but necessary job. It's dirty because one must on occasion physically interact with other humans. Their medical doctors are also considered such a profession, but for some reason Fetologists are even lower. Their job is, for lack of a better word, to oversee human reproduction. As anti-social and asexual as Solarian society struck me, they still rely entirely upon human copulation to begin procreation. For reasons I never asked (as they were not relevant) and what all, they do not engage in any form of artificial insemination - then again, that would require some degree of direct human interaction so perhaps that is the reason they avoid such methods. Copulating with your designated spouse is for them, while disgusting to a degree, socially acceptable. Physically interacting with any human under any other circumstances is far less so and only truly accepted out of medical necessity._

_As a Fetologist, Dr. Delmarre's job was to oversee the growth of future Solarians. Embryos from impregnated wives are removed surgically early on and develop in vats, for a lack of a better word for that's what they look like. They reminded me of a sick version of the micro culture farms in our cities. His job was to oversee that development, test his "cultures" for "imperfections" as our micro-culture farmers do, and destroy any bad batch - or in this case developing human deemed genetically unacceptable. In that sense, he was playing "God," to use and archaic term. Until a Solarian matures and comes into an estate, the one Fetologist on the planet holds their lives in his or her hands. If determined genetically unacceptable, the child is destroyed. On Earth and despite our population pressures, such a job may be sufficiently offensive in concept and execution as to motivated some towards violent indignation. On Solaria, it seems the only revolting thing about the job is that it must be done by a human at all and most of those I spoke with are of the opinion that it's better someone else did such things and not them. Given the Solarians' peculiar psychology, an argument could be made that should Dr. Delmarre vacate his position as planetary Fetologist, meaning someone else would be chosen to perform the job in his place, that hypothetical someone might be motivated to so something drastic except for the fact that Dr. Delmarre had voluntarily taken the position for life. His life goal was to somehow take all human interactions out of the production of future Solarians. _

_The only clue I had aside from everyone's obvious conclusion that it could only have been the wife was from Agent Gruer their Chief of Security. Fetology may have been the victims principal "occupation," but he seemed to dabble in far more. Shortly before his death he spoke with Agent Gruer about having uncovered a plot of some kind that somehow endangered all humanity. He never elaborated but planned to present his case once he had sufficient evidence. Before I could get more information from Agent Gruer, he was somehow poisoned. Whatever the toxin was, whoever sought to administer it used far too much and his reaction was violent regurgitation which probably saved his life, but he was not available to me for the rest of my time on Solaria. _

_Such things are said to be impossible on Solaria where every human is shielded from such harm by their own army of robots bound by the Three Laws. If a human were to try to harm a human, a robot would prevent it. And, under ordinary circumstances, no robot would knowingly harm a human or through inaction allow a human to come to harm and no order or sense of self-preservation would override that. So how was it possible that Delmarre was bludgeoned to death and Gruer nearly poisoned? In both instances there were robots present. But the fact remained that it had happened anyway._

_The robot who had served Gruer the poisoned drink was still functioning afterwards but was clearly damaged. It could still communicate. It was unaware that there was anything harmful in the glass. How was this possible?_

_I postulated that there might be an indirect way for a robot to become an instrument of harm. Naturally, the Solarians felt I was foolish and I admit my own prejudices against the things must have come into play. I postulated an indirect chain of causation. Robot A is ordered to place a liquid in a glass. It is not told what the liquid is nor to do anything else with the glass. Later, Robot B is ordered to fill the glass with a beverage, not being told the nature of the liquid already present. It is then told to leave the glass and return to its duties. Finally, Robot C, unaware of the contaminated contents, is ordered to serve the glass to the victim. Not one of the robots could be aware that their actions might lead to harm, and yet that is exactly what happened in my hypothetical. I was told it would be next to impossible and conceded that I lacked the finesse to accomplish the task - but an expert on robots on the other hand might be able to do such a thing. I was convinced that the poisoning of Mr. Gruer was not coincidental and moreover that it was related to the previous murder. The questioned remained as to how Dr. Delmarre was actually killed and why. My only clues now were the mysterious plot and what had happened to Agent Gruer. It was not much, but it was far more than I had before then._

_The key directly and indirectly was the wife. She was found unconscious at the scene of the crime so it was possible that she killed her husband, disposed of the weapon, and feigned her hysteria. But that does not explain what happened later to Agent Gruer. I have no reason to believe she was aware of the man or of any connection between him and her husband. As I said, I was convinced the two assaults were related. Mrs. Delmarre as the mastermind behind them made no sense at all. By her own admission, she knew nothing about robotics nor did she care to learn. This admission was confirmed by Dr. Jothan Leebig, a "noted" robotisist, colleague of Dr. Delmarre and confidant of the wife. He had offered to take the wife on as an apprentice but she had flat out rejected the notion. It also struck me as highly implausible that the young woman was behind some kind of plot that threatened humanity. _

_Dr. Leebig, through his talks with Mrs. Delmarre, knew that the marriage was dysfunctional even by Solarian standards and knew that she disliked her husband intensely and had a temper. On Earth, the marriage would have been dissolved long before things got out of hand - or so we like to hope. On Solaria, marriages are arranged based upon genetic considerations and exist solely for the purpose of procreation. And yet Dr. Delmarre was delaying that aspect indefinitely without telling anyone, especially his wife, as to why. Her only way out of the situation was to conceive their quota of viable Solarians, but he was not allowing this to happen. She had a motive to harm her husband, but this does not explain what happened to Agent Gruer (or the attempt on my own life.) I honestly believed and it was confirmed to my statisfaction by Dr. Altim Thool who was her attending physician, that Mrs. Delmarre truly has no recollection of the murder. That would rule out motivation to eliminate Solaria's Chief of Security and the Earthman investigator. Besides, I am convinced she lacked the skills with robots necessary for either attack._

_(In my case, it was an archaic bow and arrow fired by a young man being raised on their children farm. Archery, apparently, is a sport on Solaria given its solitary nature. The boy was told by a Robot that I was not truly human. The arrow was the only one in his possession with a point and the point was coated with a foreign substance later confirmed to be poison. And I know that Mrs. Delmarre was unaware of my whereabouts at the time.)_

_Dr. Leebig had been working with the victim on a prototype robot. Why it was either necessary or useful was never explained, although separately I knew that Dr. Delmarre wanted to eliminate any human involvement in child rearing so perhaps that was a factor. Specifically, Dr. Leebig was designing robots with easily detachable limbs to Dr. Delmarre's specifications. These detachable limbs were specialized and designed to perform specific tasks probably requiring a degree of delicacy not possible with normal robot appendages. A robot with detachable limbs could be rendered effectively inoperable simply by removing the limbs and such a limbless robot would be unable to prevent harm in the physical sense. The robot present at the scene was just that type, one with detachable limbs. The killer therefore had access to a weapon that might well be overlooked and means to prevent robot interference. The killer was not thinking, but blinded with anger and removed a limb or (more likely) picked up an already detached limb and struck the victim in the head. The robot was physically unable to intervene. The killer was indeed Mrs. Delmarre, but she was not the murderer._

_The murderer set up the sequence of events that led to Dr. Delmarre's death as well as the sequence of events that nearly led to the deaths of Agent Gruer and myself. It was he who made that unique robot available to the victim (and killer) when its availability was in no ways essential to its development. The murderer was an expert with robots and could track me having already grown suspicious of the investigation. He knew and had the skills necessary to create the indirect sequence of events that would allow a homicide to occur in a planet filled with sophisticated robots all governed by the First Law. Mrs. Delmarre was a tool used to accomplish a murder. The murderer, the one who planned the assaults and sought to carry them through was the robotisist Dr. Jothan Leebig._

_Why the robotisist?_

_During the course of my investigation I spent time Outside. It was unnerving to say the least but necessary. I was able to tolerate it for a time despite my lifelong conditioning and I found that Solarians can tolerate the physical presence of other humans for a time as well if convinced of its necessity. Dr. Thool and Miss Klorissa Cantoro (Dr. Delmarre's colleague at the children farm) have to physically interact with humans as a part of their job. Dr. Thool seemed unconcerned with my physical presence and Miss Cantoro's discomfort was because I was from Earth far more than because I was another human. A friend of the victim, a Mr. Anselmo Quemot and self styled Sociologist, was able to tolerate my physical presence for a time as was the Acting Head of Security Agent Corwin Attlebish. Mrs. Delmarre adjusted fairly quickly, although it should be noted she was much younger than any of the others. There were only two Solarians whom I spoke with in the course of the investigation who were never in my physical presence: Agent Gruer (albeit the poisoning occurred before I actually, physically met with any Solarian) and Dr. Leebig who was quite apoplectic at the mere suggestion. Once assured my presence was not absolutely necessary, the latter Dr. Leebig relaxed and was - perhaps - a little too open with me._

_Dr. Leebig was working on outfitting devices with positronic brains. This would eliminate the need for human control and free up anthropological positronic machines for more useful duties. But his goals were far more sinister. He wanted to build unmanned (by human or robot) warships controlled by a positronic brain. One would think that the First Law makes such a thing impossible, but that assumes that the brain knows its targets are human. One cannot tell that a spaceship has humans aboard simply by looking. It is the logical assumption, but without the evidence to support such a logical deduction, it's just an object in space and the same can be said for planets. An unmanned, positronic ship would not know its targets are human and it would be more maneuverable and far more ruthless than any human controlled warship. A fleet of such ships could wipe out the combined battle fleets of the Spacer worlds and the worlds themselves (and Earth) without knowingly violating the First Law. Dr. Leebig's fear of physical presence became an obsession and then a psychosis. A galaxy crawling with billions of humans became an intolerable state of affairs. This was the plot Dr. Delmarre sought to uncover at the cost of his life. Dr. Leebig's fear was so acute that when R. Daneel entered his presence (on my orders for the purpose of apprehending him), he killed himself fortunately after having confessed to everything. He, the great robotisist, was unaware that Daneel was a robot - as were the other Solarians._

_The crime was solved to the satisfaction of the Spacers. Mrs. Delmarre, the unwitting tool in the murder, was allowed to emigrate off world and I was on my way back to earth within a matter of hours - on separate ships. That damnable subetric drama suggests we were aboard the same ship and interacted. Again, I spent the entire trip confined to my cabin with only R. Daneel as company._

_The question that had vexed me from the time of my meeting with Undersecretary Minnim until I arrived at Solaria had been forgotten practically from the moment I set foot upon that world. I was focused on the task at hand, not irrelevant philosophical or political musings. To quote and ancient literary source: "the game was afoot." But now I had two weeks with nothing better to do. Once again, why was an Earthman requested? It was now somewhat obvious that homicide may well be as alien to Spacers as Earthmen are. Still, R. Daneel could be programmed with investigative techniques and an Auroran could have been assigned as the human interface. Why bring a Plainsclothesman from Earth into the picture at all? Did Solaria request one? Did Aurora insist?_

_I originally assumed that Aurora's relationship with the Spacer worlds might be analogous to the relationship of our Terrestrial Government to the Cities. The Cities are largely autonomous politically, but the Terrestrial Government may interfere if doing so is for the benefit of the world as a whole. I assumed Aurora was similar because they are the oldest and most populous of those worlds and economically and militarily the most powerful or so it seems. After all, it was Aurora that led the Spacer coalitions in both intergalactic wars with Earth. But this is not truly the case. Politically, Aurora cannot interfere with the domestic situation on any Spacer world. Their involvement in the Solarian situation was at the request of the Solarians, not at the insistence of Aurora. I've already suggested Earth's involvement: the Spacers lack of any experience with crime of such sort and their need to find answers. But again, why did they need us or me for that matter? Surely, given time, they could have figured it out on their own. I had been given a clue in my very first meeting with a Spacer: the Dr. Fastolfe of Aurora mentioned something at the outset of the Dr. Sarton case, but that was not enough to explain our involvement with the Solaria matter nor why for the first time in a thousand years any Earthman was allowed to travel to any Spacer world._

_There must be some other reason why the Spacers (or at least certain elements within that culture) have departed from their former policy and I now believe the murder on Solaria was more an excuse to get an Earthman into Space than a true need for our assistance._


	4. Chapter 4

**For any who have not figured this out, this is based upon the works of Isaac Asimov, one of the greats in science fiction literature and one of the first after Victor Hugo, Edgar Rice Burroughs and H.G. Wells to gain a long term following. He was a prolific writer and did not confine his works to fiction although some may argue that Arthur C. Clark was more influential on culture than he was with the non-sci-fi works.**

**Asimov did not invent robots. That proceeded his first work by decades and the first robot in movies appeared in the German (silent) film "Metropolis" in 1927 or so, some thirteen years before the barely 20 year old Asimov saw his first Robot story published in a Sci-Fi fiction magazine in 1940. Its first literary reference (aside from mythical golems and Frankenstien) was in a Chech work (Russan's Uninversal Robots) in 1920. (Shelly's Frakenstein predated this mechanical thing by a century and more.) Later Asimov's several stories were compiled into a book "I, Robot," he defined the "positronic" brain and its Three Laws. That book was published in 1950 (for Fantasy Fans that was after Hobbit and first short story of the Chronicles of Narnia but before the first volume of the Lord of the Rings.) The notion of a "positronic brain" would reappear in popular culture with Star Trek: The Next Generation and its android character Data.**

**In around 1951, another collection of Asimov's short stories were published in a book entitled "Foundation." Coherent as the "Robot" stories were and with recurring characters (even it they were dead), it told a story of humanity tens of thousands of years from now. "Foundation", its sequel "Foundation and Empire" and "Second Foundation" barely if at all mentioned robots. But they were mentioned at some point. Much later, Asimov wrote "Prelude to Foundation", a prequel to the trilogy and it mentioned robots again referring back (indirectly) to "I, Robot" and his other robot work "The Caves of Steel" which was summarized above - the Dr. Sarton Case. He then wrote a sequel to "Caves…": "The Naked Sun" which was the investigation on Solaria. All of this appears in some form in his later "Foundation" works. This Chapter is about the "Mirror Image Case" mentioned but briefly in "The Robots of Dawn" his third Baley/Daneel murder mystery. All he wrote about that case was that it happened on a Spacer ship, Daneel was there and he once again solved the case. No other details were provided leaving fertile ground for me even if it is back story for my own plot which truly begins not long after "The Robots of Dawn" and long before his final book of that specific series "Robots and Empire."**

**The Story resumes…**

_This brings us to my third Spacer case. It began about a year after I returned from Solaria and in much the same way as again I was called to Washington for a meeting with Undersecretary Minnim. This time, while it would be both an "Out of Area" and technically and "off world" case, I would travel no further than Earth orbit. In orbit above Earth was a Space Liner of Auroran registry with a dead body aboard, one whose demise was not as a result of natural processes. The murder was discovered within two hours and the ship communicated the facts it knew to Aurora. Aurora diverted the ship from its scheduled route to Earth orbit. Whether they were thinking of getting us involved at that point is not clear. The diversion was at the orders of the shipping company and not the Auroran government I would learn and was done so as to prevent the murderer from escaping at the next port of call. Escape to Earth, while physically possible, would be suicidal for a Spacer given their lack of immunity to even the most benign of infections. _

_The Auroran government only then made its request to Earth and sent a small Dispatch Ship. They, apparently, can reach a safe jump distance far more quickly than can a Liner. It's not a question about sub-light speed. As I understand it they are only marginally faster. They do accelerate more quickly, but apparently ship's mass is also a factor: the more massive a ship is, the further it must be from local gravitational influences to jump safely. Dispatch Ships are small and can carry maybe four humans and no significant cargo. That ship arrived with one human aboard and three robots. Two were technically part of the crew and the third was a passenger: R. Daneel Olivaw._

_After another thorough Spacer disinfection, I boarded the Dispatch Ship and we left Earth to dock with the Liner in orbit. I was given a choice: spend the time in one of the four cabins which have no windows (and were much smaller than the ones on my last voyage) or on the bridge with the Pilot. If I chose the bridge, there would be the window to contend with which could not be turned off to spare me the view outside the ship. At least for this stage, I chose the windowless cabin. _

_The victim was Dr. Halfo Carrik of Aurora. She was found dead in her cabin on her bed with a wound to the chest. The murder weapon was found beside her. It was called a plasma cutter. It is typically used to cut metal and such things are aboard ships for repairs. It is hand held and directs a beam of plasma - superheated gas - out to a distance of about thirty centimeters. The gas is hot enough to cut through that thickness of steel or even titanium without effort. According to the ship's doctor, death would've been practically instantaneous as the wound penetrated and destroyed the victim's heart and cauterized the wound for good measure so there was no blood._

_The victim was a woman. She appeared to be about thirty-five Earth years in age but by Spacer records apparently was a little over a hundred and twenty earth years in age. She had been accompanied on the voyage by her personal robot AZX-2348 whom she called Aziz. The robot was not present when the murder occurred having been ordered out of the cabin by the victim. Apparently, she was having a sexual liaison with another passenger, one Ilfo Damise of Aurora as well. Apparently the victim preferred her sexual liaisons to be private. Obviously, Mr. Damise was the prime suspect but again there was a hitch._

_The one thing the Captain of the ship had done (which neither the Spacers of Spacetown had done in the Sarton case nor the Solarians in the Delmarre case) was preserve the crime scene. R. Aziz discovered the body and immediately reported it to the Captain and the Captain had sealed the room, evacuated all the air, and so it remained until I arrived aboard. The first humans to enter were myself and the ship's doctor and the only other thing allowed in was R. Daneel. The body was in pristine condition, but rigor mortis had long since come and gone. The doctor examined the corpse and very quickly was able to state the cause of death. R. Daneel and I searched for other evidence. Aside from the murder weapon, there were human hairs not associated with the victim and, upon explanation, I learned that had the room not been sealed, neither R. Aziz or the ship's robot cleaning staff would have removed that evidence as a matter of course for them. The hairs were sent to Earth to the Bureau for DNA analysis and in short order we had the results. It then seemed to be a simple matter of testing the primary suspect which we did and it was a match, but there was a problem._

_Ilfo Damise was not the only person who could match the DNA. Another passenger was aboard who also could match: Miram Damise, Ilfo's identical twin brother (identical twins share the same DNA). It had been the reason for the containment of the crime scene. One of them had done the deed, the other had not. Ilfo was the obvious suspect because he clearly had access to the victim, but being obvious does not rule out Miram. It was certainly tempting to use the DNA as conclusive proof of Ilfo's guilt. It would've gotten me off the ship and back to Earth much sooner. But the DNA implicated two people and I never like sloppy investigations. I want to be certain in my own mind that the perp I collar was the doer and his or her punishment can be justified. The evidence favored Ilfo, but did not exonerate the brother. This could have been a crime of passion - the doer killing in a fit of rage because the victim in some way drove him to it. Or it could be something else. As a professional, I had to know even if the Captain and R. Daneel seemed convinced the case was solved. It was not. All I had was a prime suspect, not the doer. Still, I suspected a lover's quarrel of some kind as such suspicion is "human" or "Earther." But the victim was lying on the bed and the only apparent disruption to her clothing was the burn marks from the murder weapon which made little sense. Surely there was some sort of struggle for some reason._

_Neither suspect had an alibi. They both claimed to have been alone in their cabins at the time of the murder and asleep. Neither had a personal robot in attendance to confirm this, not that it would have mattered for I later learned that robot evidence is generally inadmissible on Spacer worlds. Not one of the three laws prevents a robot from lying and the Second Law allows them to be ordered to do so provided their logic does not see it as a violation of the First one not to harm humans or allow them to come to harm. I was left with fingering Ilfo or finding and proving the one and only killer even if it was Ilfo. I was left with the time consuming process of research, interviews and whatever additional forensic investigation I could do without a forensics team from Earth. I suggested bringing one up, but it was rejected out of hand by the Captain and, I suspect, on orders from Aurora. One Earthman was more than enough and was already causing discomfort._

_There is one thing about identical twins that is never identical. For whatever reason, while their DNA is the same, their fingerprints are not. It's an old technique dating back before the dawn of the hyperspace era, but it works. I was allowed to send out inquiries to both Earth and the Spacer worlds about the victim, the principal suspects and their respective worlds. Meanwhile, R. Daneel and I dusted the scene for prints and fingerprinted the victim and the two brothers. Surely this could be it. Surely the fingerprints would solve this thing and I could get back to Earth. Just as surely, I was wrong._

_The place had not been cleaned. There were fingerprints everywhere. I had them sent back to Earth for analysis by the Bureau. There were even prints on the murder weapon. I had them! I was certain I had them now! But remember, I sent back only three sets of prints from known parties of interest: the victim's, and those of the two brothers. The Bureau came back with the results in short order. The prints on the murder weapon matched neither of the brothers although both had left prints in the room. It was not a suicide either for the prints on the weapon did not match the victim. Moreover, it seems there were two "unknown" sets of prints in the room. Neither Ilfo or his brother were the doers based upon that. It did not mean neither was involved, but neither did the deed itself. The idiot Spacer who did, if it was planned, was unaware of this technique. But yet again, I was back at the beginning. Maybe the Damise brothers were involved and maybe they were not. It was clear each had access to the cabin at one point or another and it was clear Ilfo had been intimate with the victim. But that proves nothing. They did not plunge the plasma cutter into her heart. Someone else had done that._

_Now I had to fingerprint every human aboard - including myself for good measure. I left that task to R. Daneel. While I doubt any aboard knew he was a robot, he was Auroran to them and not an Earthman. They would be more comfortable with the "crazy" Earthman's procedure if it was being done by a Spacer and R. Daneel was ordered not to tell them the why of it beyond the fact that Earth was asked to investigate the murder because we deal with such things all the time being the barbarians that we are and this was an Earth thing. In the meantime, I needed information on all the passengers and, if they were not from Aurora, their home worlds as well. Inquiries were sent out and responses were received while the Dispatch Ship traveled to and from Earth with each new collection of fingerprints._

_The Liner was on a return voyage to its home world of Aurora and, in fact, Aurora was the next "port of call" had it not been diverted to Earth orbit. Aboard were three hundred and sixty-seven passengers, forty-seven crew and goodness knows how many robots. Many of the passengers were tourists, hopping from planet to planet to see the sights or some such. Some were on business, traveling two and from the worlds. Our victim was returning from a business trip to a planet called Melpomenia and, while she and Ilfo seemed to be traveling together, they maintained separate cabins aboard. (They had shared the same ship to that planet some six months earlier). The brother Miram's presence seemed coincidental. He had been on Melpomenia as well on a business deal, but had arrived there some months after the paramours did and just happened to be returning at this time. I don't like coincidences, but this seems to have been one._

_The victim was a Planetologist which the Spacers claimed was a relatively new field of study. Earth sources show that it's as old as hyperspacial travel itself. Scout ships from Earth always had a team of experts to study planets and prepare recommendations as to their potential suitability for colonization or exploitation. The thought briefly crossed my mind that the Spacers - or at least the Aurorans - were looking to move further into the galaxy. Why not? It's not like we of Earth are allowed to do so._

_Ilfo Damise was a self-proclaimed "Personal Stylist" whose so called job was to see to the outward appearance of his client. I've met one since. I got the impression that they don't "service" one client but many and certainly do not planet hop except to drum up cliental. He may well have been that, but it's clear his "personal" services were not so limited in regards to the victim and it also seems his "services" were exclusive to the victim. I've already said and knew he was the victim's paramour and my guess is that was his service to her._

_Miram Damise was a salesman and was off world to drum up business for his Auroran based manufacturing company. Based on that information from both Aurora and Miram himself, I might well have excluded him as a suspect. Ilfo as a possible rejected lover was still high on the list, but the damnable fingerprint evidence clearly showed a third party. It seemed to me that this planet of Melpomenia might somehow be the key. It was the only true connection between the victim and the two twins and, moreover, there were one hundred and seven citizens aboard the liner from that world. There had to be a connection to that world even if it wasn't obvious._

_For some reason it struck me that somehow the victim's occupation as a Planetologist and the planet of Melpomenia were somehow connected. It was the only world she had been to other than her home world of Aurora. But how? I needed to know why she was there and all that I could learn of that world._

_Melpomenia was the first "water world" (one with liquid water on the surface) Earth discovered with the advent of hyperdrive. It was not a "ready made" world. It's temperatures and atmospheric pressures were within acceptable ranges for humans, but its atmosphere was toxic. While it was predominantly a nitrogen atmosphere, it also had high concentrations of carbon dioxide and methane. Free oxygen was detected, but measured in the handful of parts per million and not as a percentage of the whole gas bag clinging to the planet. It was not a dead world, however for there was primitive life forms throughout its seas. Some were similar to algae, gaining sustenance through photosynthesis, living off of the carbon dioxide and expelling free oxygen. Others were more animal in nature, able to move through their water world. They consumed nutrients from the water, including the algae and breathed in methane exhaling for lack of a better term oxygen. High concentrations of oxygen was lethal to them, but this Melpomenia was a primordial Earth. It is where we were billions of years ago and in time the algae and methane breathing bacteria like organisms would consume the deadly and suffocating gas and replace it with oxygen. It was on the path to be "ready made." It might take millions upon millions of years, but in time it would be ready. Earth decided to accelerate the process._

_We bombarded Melpomenia with mosses and other simple plants to deal with the carbon dioxide content. We further bombarded it with our own methane breathing bacteria which to this day exist here in anoxic environments such as nutrient rich mud and hydrothermal vents and pools. Our life was far more hardy and prolific than the life on Melpomenia and far more productive in freeing and replacing oxygen. Millions of years was brought down to a couple thousand as our probes hit that world time and time again. Once the atmosphere was acceptable to humans and our attendant animal life, the colonization ships left Earth to colonize the first truly "Terraformed" world. This was Melpomenia. _

_It's population is around ten million with a ten to one robot to human ratio. They practice population control and few have moved there since we sent out colonists. It views itself as a paradise within the inhabited galaxy and for now it may well be. But its fate is already sealed if Dr. Carrick (the victim) is to be believed. _

_Melpomenia may be a "ready made" world for human habitation after its enforced terraforming. But it is by no means a young one. By Dr. Carrick's studies, it and its star are older than earth and our sun by close to a billion years. It became potentially habitable as the star began to transition from fusing hydrogen to helium. Before then, it was too cold for liquid water to exist. It's star is slowly expanding and transitioning from that of a main sequence star to a red giant. In time, while it expands it will cool but for now it grows hotter and more violent. It's solar winds, particles cast off from its nuclear furnace have grown from a gentle breeze to a storm and Melpomenia lacks the magnetic field to protect its own atmosphere from erosion. Since its discovery nearly three thousand years ago, Melpomenia has lost three percent of its atmosphere to the increasing storm and this process is accelerating. The victim estimated that within five (Spacer) generations the increase in heat from the star and the loss of atmosphere will render the planet uninhabitable. Her recommendation to Aurora was to plan for its total evacuation well before then. _

_But to where? While emigration is not unknown in the Spacer worlds (with the obvious exception of Solaria) it is not in large numbers. Handfuls and not teeming thousands or millions do relocate between worlds, always subject to quotas even on the newer ones. How do you relocate some ten or more millions? Do you leave them to die with their star? Do you lower your standard of living to accommodate them? Or do you find them a new "ready made" world free for the taking? It was this last one that the victim recommended and she recommended beginning the evacuation sooner rather than later. _

_Such an evacuation is not without difficulties. Even assuming a "ready made" world, the evacuees would have to make it self sufficient and have to rely upon the largess of the galaxy to feed them until they became so. Even then, millions would probably perish. Even with robots, millions would die from the dislocations. Spacer society is one that cherishes human life far more than our own does. Millions die each month on Earth from accidents or worse: homicide. Spacers have no concept of this and find any untimely death unacceptable nor do they willingly accept any degradation in their personal standard of living both of which conditions would be necessary in a massive sense to evacuate Melpomenia. _

_Could this be the reason Dr. Carrik lay dead in her cabin? Could her findings be so shocking to the people of Melpomenia that one of them would kill her to silence her truth be damned? Or could there be others who without regard to that planet's certain fate wanted to suppress the knowledge - to keep the stars as they were as it were or at least for themselves and not for the people from Melpomenia? Or could one of the Damise brothers still be the instigator of this without regard to any galactic politics or implications? It all hinged on the results of the fingerprint analysis being done on Earth, a process which took time and, since I had almost literally a captive audience, I took that time to interview everyone, one on one and more than once. After all, the interviews might solve the puzzle in and of themselves and, by repeating, I hoped to keep everyone guessing what the crazy Earthman was after and hope one or more stories would change to shed light on the case assuming the fingerprints did not for some reason. My limited experience with Spacer crime suggested the simple solution never amounted to anything…_

_And neither really did the interviews. It seemed everyone either had no alibi or did (if one would only believe their robots). It was sleep time for passengers and the only ones I could truly rule out were those members of the crew clearly at their watch stations aboard ship. I had hundreds of potential suspects and no real leads anymore with the yet to be identified fingerprints of the killer implicating someone but not either of the DNA prime suspects. It was infuriating!_

_In time, the Bureau did its job and I had matches for both of the until then unidentified fingerprints and they were a surprise to me and my partner R. Daneel. They were both, by their interviews, in their bunks asleep at the time of the murder (but so it seemed was everyone else.) But they were also both crewmen aboard the Liner, not passengers and, more critically, assigned to engineering which had little if any contact with passengers. Considering the weapon - a plasma cutter used in repairs - this made some sense as either would have access to one. But the why remained elusive. Why would one or either or both kill a passenger? I doubted there was some sort of love triangle or quadrangle involved moreover I doubted that either of these crewman - both Auroran - cared a wit about the hypothetical fate of Melpomenia and its population. And yet both were in her cabin and one - Crewman Arstus Hamil - did the deed or at least it was his fingerprints on the plasma cutter. Why?_

_I had my third interview with the crewman whose fingerprints was not on the weapon first. I had enough evidence to prove he was in the room even if he didn't believe in fingerprints. I told him I was certain he was either the doer or the accomplice although neither really mattered. We were in Earth orbit so he was subject to our laws. I had enough to convict him as an accomplice to murder and enough to have him sent to a penal colony where, in all probability, he would die in months or less from infection. This, of course, was a lie. We have no such penal colonies on earth rather psychic probing to modify anti-social behavior to the appropriate degree. But I am not bound to tell suspects the truth. I did have enough to place him in the victim's cabin, but that was it. Malefactors are sentenced to psychological restructuring. If and only if that is not deemed possible by the experts and if their crime is serious enough to warrant it, then and only then are they imprisoned. And we have no jurisdiction over Spacers. Fortunately, the accomplice did not know this and spilled to the extent that he could._

_The doer - the one whose fingerprints were on the weapon - was his immediate superior. He told the accomplice that this was a matter of Auroran security, that the victim was a threat to Aurora and the Galaxy and Auroran Security had contacted him to deal with the situation. She had to be killed before the ship reached Aurora and she could embark on her treason. He had his orders from Auroran Security to this effect and had to see it through and the lowly accomplice came along as back-up in case there was an issue. His boss - the accomplice - after all had served in the Navy - or so he had always said - and thus it was reasonable to see him as an Agent of Security. The other man wanted nothing to do with a killing but felt that to ignore an order from Auroran Security was … foolhardy._

_So now it was down to the doer. True, it was possible that the accomplice was lying, but he had rolled and now it was the doer's turn in the hot seat. I had him dead to rights. His fingerprints were on the weapon and he as a repair technician had access to the plasma cutter which was - by the way - checked out to him less than two hours earlier. This tidbit was known before, but made no sense until now for it did not follow that a man with no motive would check out a potential lethal weapon to kill a total stranger. Where was the motive after all, unless he was truly psychotic? He could have set it down somewhere and the doer then stole it to do the deed. This has happened before in my experience where murders were the result of restricted items. I dismissed him until the fingerprint evidence returned because cutters seldom left the engineering spaces and yet they were not watched so someone else could have taken it when it was set aside … still, that bit bugged me._

_The doer broke quickly. Confronted with the evidence his accomplice had provided, he admitted he killed the woman. But he also confirmed aspects of his accomplices tale. He had served in the Navy. Moreover, he was hoping for a job in the Security Forces and lo and behold here's this Security Officer giving him his chance. All he had to do was kill an Auroran traitor. It took him days to get around to it. Killing was hardly something a Spacer did and there were the robots to consider. But the circumstances presented themselves and the deed was done in the hopes of advancement. The Security Officer in question had offered no name nor any kind of identification, but the Spacer killer took him at his word and did the deed. The "Officer" had to be aboard, but who was it? I laid out the holographs of every human passenger and crewman aboard and he fingered not one but two of them: the twin Damise brothers. Which one was it, I asked. He did not know. It was one of them and I was back at the beginning of it all. I had the killer, but not the man who had set things in motion. Damn Spacers!_

_I can't say why, but I called in Miram Demise first. My thinking was he was the businessman and was on Melpomenia to conclude some kind of deal and not as the boy-toy of the victim. Perhaps her information about the certain (it seemed) demise of Melpomenia was bad for business, I suspected. I was wrong._

_He was on Melpomenia at the behest of his company to cancel a deal. There had been issues with quality of what the Melpomenia supplier had been sending and there was a better supplier elsewhere in the Spacer worlds. Miram could care less if Melpomenia was about to be destroyed, good riddance he thought. But it gets more murky. His brother Ilfo was always the outgoing one, always the one to get the girls as it were and Ilfo even from the start as barely a teenager shared his conquests with his twin brother who - to quote Miram and Ilfo later - "couldn't score in an Arcturian brothel with all the credits of Aurora to spend." Miram got the sloppy seconds, as it were, but it was more than he could get of his own devises until he met his wife. Ilfo had no wife. He preferred his hedonistic lifestyle to any thought of fidelity. He also preferred women who would "augment" his income for his "personal" services. But he also preferred an open "playing field." He used Miram as a surrogate for his partners so that he could expand his own options in that regard - or at least until Miram married. Miram took that arrangement as a commitment which apparently was not common on his world. But Melpomenia was not Aurora and Miram's wife was not there so when he met his brother and his brother asked for "a favor" to allow aforesaid brother the opportunity to "sample" the local "wares," Miram resorted to his old role as surrogate sex partner. (Fidelity on Aurora, while not unknown, is an exception and not the rule for either sex apparently.) So Miram took to Dr. Carrik's bed while Ilfo played with the locals. That they shared the same ship back to Aurora was coincidental. But it seemed to be in Ilfo's favor as he used Miram to keep Dr. Carrick otherwise occupied while he had liaisons with other women claiming to be Miram and not himself it seems. So why was Dr. Carrik murdered? This was a love triangle of sorts, was it not?_

_Miram made it as clear as he could to me the pathetic Earthman. Dr. Carrik was just "a shag," as he put it - a woman willing and eager to spread her legs for him and he was certain for his brother. She meant nothing to Miram except as an easy liaison and probably even less to his brother who would never commit to any single woman (married or not) so long as there were so many out there he had yet to sleep with. _

_Arguably, Miram had nothing to do with the murder for he had no reason to kill the woman. We on Earth might argue otherwise. He was, after all, cheating on his wife by our standards. She might have wished the affair moved in another direction. But Auroran standards are different. Having sex outside of marriage is quite acceptable to them. Having children outside of marriage is what constitutes their idea of adultery and the victim was not pregnant at the time of the murder. Besides, so far as the victim knew and even if she wanted marriage, she apparently did not suspect the switch in partners. So once again I was back to the original suspect in the crime._

_Why would Ilfo have masqueraded as a Security Agent and engineered the woman's demise? While on the surface insanity could be ruled out, many truly insane people are on the surface sane. Assuming it was Ilfo who set up the murder, what was it that set his sights on the victim? Why did he care whether she lived or died? While he had never been faithful to her by our standards, he had been her principal (or so she thought) lover for two years and more. What changed? I used Miram to help break Ilfo. It was, in the end, depressingly pedestrian._

_Miram could care less about the supposedly impending doom of Melpomenia. He was upper management in an Auroran company, one which never promoted foreigners above a certain level which was far below his own. So what if millions of displaced natives of Melpomenia came to Aurora? It meant nothing to him. Was he aware of the prediction of doom? He was. Dr. Carrik had spoken of it in bed after their couplings. She was obsessed with it. But it meant nothing to him._

_In the end, it meant everything to Ilfo. While his twin was at the high end of industry, he was a leech who lived off of the largess of wealthy, randy women. His chosen profession (which provided access to such women) was near the bottom of Auroran economics. It was the type of profession that hoards of displaced persons would consider if there was a market and Ilfo could not handle that. He could care less about the job itself. But losing access to such wealthy women was an issue. He might actually have to work for a living as opposed to leeching off the women he bedded. And a huge influx of foreign labor threatened his access to his supply of leech accepting females. He could not allow that to happen! The news about Melpomenia had to be suppressed!_

_While Ilfo was a leech, he could not bring himself to actually kill. Enter our gullible crewman hoping for a leg up and a man who had to be an actor to be the leech that he was. He apparently acted the part of a secret agent of Auroran Security and was convincing at least to a man whose only experience with Auroran Security was on their subethric fictional dramas. Ilfo had the woman killed for not better reason than her revelations hypothetically interfered with his sex life and access to a free ride. _

_Both of the brothers had been in the victim's cabin and quite possible both had copulated with her before her murder as disturbing as that seems and both within a day or less of the deed. Robotic cleansing of cabins occurred almost every ship day on the second by their time. Ilfo had set things up. He was to be there for a liason at a certain time and she dismissed her personal robot but minutes beforehand. Enter the crewman seeking glory and his accomplice. Maybe there was a struggle, but the plasma cutter put an end to that quickly. The body was then laid in the bed and left. The doer admitted they used sominom gas to deal with her. This is a Spacer thing which induces sleep and is freely given to Liner passengers many of whom can't fall asleep normally on a ship in space for whatever reason. He and his accomplice were masked against its effects. The body was then placed in the bed and left so as to appear that she was asleep. All of this to protect a man's meal ticket, as it were._

_Ilfo and the crewman were confined to their cabins until their return to Aurora I was told. It seems that the Spacers were confused as to what to do with them. They have no experience with that sort of crime. I was actually consulted prior to leaving the Liner as to what we do to such people on Earth. Despite our population pressures, we did away with the Death Penatly three thousand years ago on Earth. I understand that it was allowed in Space for acts of interstellar or interplanetary piracy and brigandage as well as clear acts of mutiny aboard a warship. But it's been over a thousand years since Earth was allowed access to interstellar space and I am not personally aware of that penalty ever being applied. On Earth, upon conviction of any crime of violence, the convict undergoes a psychiatric evaluation to determine whether he remains a threat to society. If he is not deemed as a threat, he faces declassification. If he remains a threat, he is then evaluated to determine whether his violent tendencies can be eliminated using a psychic probe. If he can be "cured" and returned to society, he is probed and then undergoes a period of retraining before being sent to live somewhere else. If the probe will not render him harmless, he is confined to a psychiatric hospital perhaps for the remainder of his life. The Spacers who asked seemed genuinely surprised our methods of dealing with such criminals was so humane. I guess they expected something more barbaric from us._

_On the surface, it would appear that the Spacers are discombobulated. For them, they are suffering through the worst crime spree in their recorded history (three homices, two attempted homicides and one suicide in a two year time frame) and do not have any idea how to deal with it. This may be at least partly the case. They lack the experience with such violence such that they're at a loss as to how to proceed. But I also believe there's more going on up there than meets the eye. I started coming to that conclusion in the aftermath of the Dr. Sarton case. _

_Recall, a respected Spacer robotisist was blasted out of existence by an Earthman and not just any Earthman but the City Commissioner of Police who held a G-4 Classification. _

_I know I said this before but it deserves emphasis. Did they need us to confirm their suspicions? They never have in the past and it seems as if they didn't care which Earthman did the deed at all. But did they demand justice? Did they impose trade sanctions or force us to accept more of their damnable machines? Did they demand reparations? Quite the opposite. They did the last thing any on Earth would have expected. They packed up their Spacetowns and left. Even at the time it seemed to me as if whatever it was they had hoped to accomplish had been accomplished as planned and the murder of Dr. Sarton proved that to be the case for them. The killer suffered a major declassification, but not total declassification and was allowed to keep his pension. This occurred after the Spacers left and, as far as I know, was a City of New York administrative downgrade and not a demand placed on Earth._

_I have no idea what the Spacers would have done to Dr. Leebig had he not killed himself to avoid any form of human presence. I now regret not asking at the time, but things were pretty tense and I wanted to come home. But, while that man may have been the plotter, it was the woman who wielded the weapon and inflicted the mortal blow to her husband. And yet all that happened was that she was allowed to leave for another Spacer World. Would we have been so forgiving? It was a homicide after all although most likely far short of intentional murder. Personally, I don't think she poses a future threat to others and would have been rehabilitated where she an Earth woman. But the courts would have been involved at least to some degree. When they let her walk, that was when in struck me._

_She had been cast out of paradise._

_The thought came to me on that long journey back to Earth. Solaria was a world of total leisure. The handful of humans had, those who lived through their genetic screening or culling process to adulthood, would never have to work a day in their lives. All that was needed for their comfort was provided to them by their robots. All the Solarians I met engaged in some form of "work," but it was rarely work that contributed to their economy in a material sense. That work was done by their robots. Solarians worked at their leisure, probably more out of an unconscious need for intellectual stimulation than any other reason. They could often choose not to without any true repercussions. Even Dr. Delmarre could choose not to do his job for it would be done by another as a temporary assignment. The Doctor would suffer no loss in his standing or standard of living. It was a world without risk and, arguably, without reward._

_That thought brought be to an ancient work my father had introduced me to when I was a boy called the Bible. That book and its tales and stories were the basis for great religions in the past. But that was not why it occurred to me that it might be relevant. Its opening chapters are dedicated to creation stories - stories about how the world came to be and then mankind. In it God created the universe and the earth and all that lives and breathes and, in the end, created man (or to be precise a man and a woman) and bequeathed them the world and all upon it. This world was a paradise, a world free from want or need or toil and it could remain so forever provided that the man and women obeyed a very simple rule. They were forbidden to eat the fruit of two fruit trees. That was it. In the end, they were tempted by a beast and ate the fruit from one of the forbidden trees and, as punishment, God cast them out of paradise._

_That, Solaria, and that discussion I had with Dr. Fastolfe led me to a conclusion. I can't say it's one I can either prove or disprove except to say that my subsequent dealings with the Spacers support rather than refute my conclusion. The Spacers have, to one extent or another, created something akin to paradise and it is consuming them in a way. As a culture, they lack any need or desire to improve. Why should they? Their robots take care of them. They have no involvement or investment in their children. They most often do not even know who their children are. Thus they lack any true concept of a need to improve things if not for them then for the sake of future generations. They have fallen into a state of stagnation, one so comfortable that few see it as such or wish to truly change it._

_The Spacers are a dying civilization. The vast majority are trapped by their now perfect little worlds and lack any sense of urgency or need to change things. Mr. Anselmo Quemot of Solaria, a self styled sociologist on his world (although I doubt he truly knows anything about it) commented that he sees one day all of the Spacer worlds being like Solaria, a world without society although he failed to grasp that or its implications. It would be a world of individualists without any need to true social interaction, and therefore one without any need to work towards any common good (or ill for that matter). Such a state would truly be the end of the human race in my opinion._

_This was certainly in the back of my mind when I returned from Solaria. It was certainly in the back of my mind when I began to leave the City dome to venture Outside. But at the forefront of my mind was my experience with the Outside on Solaria. The Outside was and unknown and it had bothered me. I do not like being impaired or incapacitated by fear and it bothered me that for tens of thousands of years the Outside was not an unknown or something to inspire such fear. For my own reasons, I decided to face that fear with the hope of one day conquering or - more accurately - overcoming it. _

_The "Mirror Image" investigation lasted about seven days and once it was over I was back on Earth and back to my job as a homicide detective. Between it, the Solaria case and my crackpot hobby, I reached another conclusion one which I feel differentiates Earthmen from Spacers. It seems to me the vast majority of Spacers are unfamiliar with fear and are unable to deal with it. If they can't avoid it, they react very poorly indeed. It was fear of humanity that drove Dr. Leebig to try and invent a way to end most of it and to kill those who stood in his way. It was fear of immigration that drove Ilfo to kill his lover - fear that the arrival of thousands or millions of fellow Spacers might lesson his worth. It was pathological fear of the unknown and incomprehensible to them._

_My crackpot hobby has showed me that the fears are not an inherent part of us and we of Earth can overcome them - perhaps not all of us, but enough to make some kind of difference. As I said, those young people who have joined me over the last two years adapt very quickly. Then again, they have less to unlearn. There are even those among them (my son included) who, if the weather is not too unpleasant, will spend the night Outside. The only question left in my mind until recently what difference will this make in the end. Which brings me to this last voyage. It began on my day off with me sitting under the shade of a tree Outside resting while the young people continued to tend to our fields of growing things…_


End file.
